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CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. 







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IRELAND OF TO-DAY 



THE CAUSES AND AIMS OF 
IRISH AGITATION 



/BY 

M. F. SULLIVAN 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

BY 

THOMAS POWER O'CONNOR. M. P. 



I have thought, if I could be in all other things the same, but by birth an 
Irishman, there is not a town in this island I would not visit for the purpose 
of discussing the great Irish question, and of rousing my countrymen to some 
great and united action. — John Bright, Dublin, Nov. 2, 1866. 



MA 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. M. STODDART & CO, 

1881. 



\ 






• ; % I 



THE LIBRARY 

OF CONGRESS 

WASH1NGT0* 



Copyright, 
J. M. Stoddart & Co 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers and Electrotypers. 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 



The purpose of this book is to present a popular, 
convenient and correct account of the causes and 
aims of Irish agitation. The intimate relations which 
exist between the United States and England on the 
one hand, and between the United States and Ireland 
on the other, make a concise, impartial and complete 
manual a necessity for all who desire to inform them- 
selves on the issue which is being so vigorously 
fought at the present time between the English 
government and the masses of the Irish people. 

Without going too remotely into the history of 
the country — its mythical and fabulous period not be- 
ing touched at all — the reader will find in these pages 
ample information concerning the land laws and cus- 
toms, evictions, " boycotting," agrarian crime, man- 
ufactures, revolutionary movements, coercion laws, 
penal laws, parliamentary history, education, etc., in 

Ireland ; while especial attention is paid to the im- 
2 17 



1 8 PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 

mediate causes leading to the organization of the 
Land League, its growth, operations and principles, 
with authentic biographies of its leaders, up to the 
time of its attempted suppression by the English 
government and the arrest and imprisonment of its 
foremost advocates. All the facts stated and statis- 
tics quoted are from standard authorities. 

The portion which treats of the establishment of 
peasant proprietary in other European countries will 
be found particularly curious and valuable; while 
the description of the home-life of the Irish cottier- 
farmer, who held his little farm from day to day at 
the will of his landlord, from whom he had no lease 
and who could raise his rent a dozen times a day if 
he so chose, will be found a social picture without a 
parallel in any other part of the globe. 

The advantages of the Land Acts of 1870 and 
1881 are fairly and fully presented. The illustrations 
include portraits of the principal leaders of the agita- 
tion, with scenes and places prominently identified 
with it. 



INTRODUCTION. 

By THOMAS POWER O'CONNOR, M. P. 



FOR good or ill, the Irish question is ev- 
idently destined to occupy for some time 
to come a prominent place in public attention. 
All indications point to the probability of the 
present generation seeing the close in some 
form or other of the struggle between Eng- 
land and Ireland, which has been fought with 
such varying fortunes and in so many differ- 
ent forms for so many centuries. At all 
events, the Irish people have reached the 
point when they are convinced that they are 
going to win back their national rights. Under 
such circumstances, the Irish problem will be 
forced upon the notice of all men ; and it be- 
comes a matter of necessity to know some- 
thing of the questions which underlie that 



19 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

problem. An American can least of all men 
avoid the discussion of the subject. A con- 
siderable portion of his fellow-citizens are 
Irish by birth ; a still more considerable por- 
tion are Irish by descent; and, of recent 
years, the battle of the Irish people at home 
has been fought with resources largely drawn 
from the Irish settled on the American con- 
tinent. 

Under such circumstances, it is more than 
ever opportune that the public should be 
placed in possession of the real issues at 
stake in this great struggle. Unfortunately, 
much as has been written, and as is written 
daily, on Irish subjects, the acquisition of the 
real merits of the case is far from easy. It is 
one of the disadvantages of the Irish people 
in this struggle that the history is told to the 
world by their enemies, for the English news- 
paper or journal or history is the authority 
which the mass of mankind accepts, and is 
obliged to accept. London publishes some 
of the greatest newspapers of the world; 



INTR OD UCT10N. 2 1 

the Times has an international as well as a 
national circulation, while the Irish news- 
papers are rarely heard of out of Ireland, and 
are not known even by name by the majority 
of the English-speaking people. Thus, by 
a singular fatality, the press — in which, as a 
rule, all causes find hearing, if not advocacy — 
is closed to everything on the side of the 
Irish people, and — worse than this — closed 
while it seems to be open. 

Nor is ignorance of the real history of Ire- 
land confined to those who are not Irish. It 
is an essential part of the English system of 
rule in Ireland to suppress all study of Irish 
history in Irish educational institutions. No 
discussion of the events of Irish history 
from the Irish point of view is contained in 
any of the governmental school-books ; not 
a word is allowed to be spoken on Irish his- 
tory from the Irish point of view in the 
queen's colleges, which are supported by 
governmental endowment; and thus the 
strange state of things is brought about 



22 INTRODUCTION. 

that, even among educated Irishmen, an inti- 
mate acquaintance with the smallest details 
of English history often exists side by side 
with almost absolute ignorance, even of the 
leading events in the history of Ireland. The 
knowledge of Irish history which an Irish- 
man attains he gains outside his school and 
without the assistance of his schoolmaster. 

And when the Irishman does set himself 
to the study of the history of Ireland, he finds 
immense difficulties in his way. There have 
been innumerable works on Ireland — many 
of them very able — but the history of Ireland 
has yet to be written. What is required in 
the Irish history of the future is that the 
story should be told in unexaggerated and 
calm language. The facts require no color- 
ing, and the conclusions no forcing: the for- 
mer can be allowed to stand in their simplic- 
ity, and the latter are inevitable to any ration- 
al mind. 

I have read the work to which these few 
words are a preface, and I find a clear and 



INTR OD UCTION. 2 3 

honest setting-forth of the past and present 
of the Irish question. The writer puts the 
case in a simple, straightforward and practi- 
cal way, and any intelligent person who reads 
these pages will have an accurate idea of the 
struggle of the hour. Many of the most 
popular fallacies with regard to Ireland her- 
self and the acts and objects of her present 
advocates are met by undisputed facts and 
figures ; the series of historic events are 
traced which have led to the long-delayed 
but inevitable reckoning between the Irish 
landlord and the Irish tenant which the 
world sees to-day ; and the demands of the 
Irish people on the questions of education 
and self-government are treated lucidly and 
with moderation. 

The work is indeed a storehouse of facts 
and argument, and will, I believe, do much 
toward making the Irish question better un- 
derstood, and the motives and objects of 
the Irish people more justly appreciated. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Publishers' Note 17 

Preface. By Thomas Power O'Connor 19 

What is this Irish Question ? 27 

CHAPTER I. 
Ireland prior to the Land War 33 

CHAPTER II. 
How the People lost the Land 40 

CHAPTER III. 
The Reason Ireland has no Manufactures 58 

CHAPTER IV. 
How the People lost their Parliament 79 

CHAPTER V. 
A Lettered Nation reduced by Force and Law to Illit- 
eracy no 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Irish Tenant To-Day 136 

25 



26 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

PAGE 

The Peasant- Farmer in Other Countries 153 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Peculiar Features of Irish Landlordism 183 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Landlords sow the Seed of the Land League . . . 237 

CHAPTER X. 
The Men who Gathered the Crop 304 

CHAPTER XL 
A Peaceful and Constitutional Movement 362 

CHAPTER XII. 
A Landlord's Agent goes into the Dictionary 389 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Driven from Home by Famine and Law 395 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Liberty and Crime in Ireland 403 

CHAPTER XV. 
The Land Laws 411 

CHAPTER XVI. 
What is the End to be ? 441 

Index 453 



WHAT IS THIS IRISH QUESTION? 



This: England and Ireland are members 
of the British empire. They are supposed 
to enjoy alike the benefits of the British con- 
stitution ; those benefits are administered to 
both by the same personal government. But 
England is the richest, Ireland the poorest, 
country in the empire. England's population 
has continually increased ; Ireland's has con- 
tinually diminished. Englishmen prefer to 
live in their native country : emigration has 
been only a trivial incident in their national 
history ; Irishmen prefer to live in their 
native country, yet there are four times as 
many of them in foreign countries as in 
their own : with them emigration nas been 
a chronic national necessity. England hums 
with manifold industries ; Ireland's vast water- 

27 



28 WHAT IS THIS IRISH QUESTION? 

power, capable of turning the machinery of 
the world, is silent. England's wharves are 
forests of masts ; Ireland's beautiful harbors 
are empty except when the English ship 
carries away the products of her soil. In 
England famine is unknown, although she 
has to import food ; in Ireland famine is 
frequent, although she exports food enough 
to feed her entire population. 

In England the proportion of voters to the 
male population is one in four ; in Ireland it 
is one in twenty-four. England, the richest, 
is the most lightly-taxed, portion of the 
empire ; Ireland, the poorest, is the most 
heavily taxed. In England there is liberty 
of conscience and education ; in Ireland a 
charter has been refused' to the only univer- 
sity in which four-fifths of her students can 
conscientiously seek degrees. England per- 
mits Scotchmen to shape imperial legislation 
for Scotland and appoints only Scotchmen 
to office in Scotland ; the representatives of 
Ireland in the imperial Parliament are never 



WHAT IS THIS IRISH QUESTION? 29 

consulted about legislation for that country, 
and the government offices there are filled 
with Englishmen and Scotchmen. England 
governs Scotland by her sons and in kind- 
ness ; England governs Ireland by her en- 
emies and in hatred. 

In proportion to population, there is much 
more crime of all kinds committed in Scot- 
land and England than in Ireland ; yet the 
suspension of habeas corpus is not attempted 
in those countries. In eighty years fifty-nine 
savage coercion bills, by which personal liberty 
has been extinguished, have been inflicted on 
Ireland. England gives to all dependencies 
geographically separated from her the right 
to make their domestic laws on their own 
soil — home rule ; England destroyed the Par- 
liament of Ireland and denies her home rule. 

Why? 

To answer these questions this book was 
written. 



IRELAND OF TO-DAY. 



CHAPTER I. 

IRELAND PRIOR TO THE LAND WAR. 

"T RELAND has an area of twenty million acres. 

J- It is about three-fifths the size of Illinois or 
Iowa, a little more than one-third the size of 
Oregon, not one-third the size of Colorado. It 
would not cover one-fifth of California. Its pop- 
ulation is five millions. The country being almost 
entirely devoid of manufactures, the population must 
live by the land. They have not, however, twenty 
million acres to live upon : six million acres are 
waste-land. Five million people must live, there- 
fore, on and by fourteen million acres of land. The 
land must feed them, clothe them, house them, 
educate them. 

But they do not own the land. They are simply 
a nation of tenants engaged in farming ; and the 
nature of their tenantry for centuries has been such 
that the land could not feed, clothe, house or 
educate them. The land is owned largely by per- 
sons whose title, however perfect legally while the 
3 " 83 



34 IRELAND PRIOR TO THE LAND WAR. 

country is forcibly ruled by the vast power of the 
British empire, originated in confiscation or in fraud ; 
and these persons do not, as a rule, reside upon their 
estates. They live in England or on the Continent 
the greater part of every year. They draw enor- 
mous rents from the estates and invest or spend the 
money abroad. None of it returns to Ireland. 
- For centuries it was the privilege of the Irish 
landlords to regulate the rent of land in Ireland as 
they pleased ; they could increase it as often as they 
pleased, and could, whenever they pleased, expel 
the tenant from the farm he tilled, whether he paid 
his rent or not. As there was no other occupation 
for him to engage in, and as the rent he had been 
required to pay was so excessive that he could not 
save any money to procure another farm, he and his 
family were commonly compelled to seek the poor- 
house or to die of want on the highways. 

Americans should understand at the outset this 
extraordinary difference between the relations of 
landlord and tenant in Ireland and the relations of 
landlord and tenant in the United States. Here 
a lease binds alike the man who owns and the man 
who rents;! in Ireland the landlord would give no 
lease. Here rent cannot be increased during the 
period covered by the lease ;[there the rent could 
be increased whenever the landlord chose to increase 
it. Here the tenant's right is good during the period 
covered by the lease if he complies in good faith 
with its conditions; there the tenant could be ejected 



IRELAND PRIOR TO THE LAND WAR. 35 

at the caprice of the landlord, and what are known in 
Ireland as " evictions " were of constant occurrence, 
generally under heartrending circumstances. Here 
the law respects and protects equally the rights of 
the landlord and the rights of the tenant £ there the 
law respected only the landlord : the tenant had 
no rights. 

It is obvious, without further illustration, that the 
landlord-and-tenant system which has prevailed in 
Ireland would not be tolerated for a day in the 
United States or in any other free country on the 
face of the globe. It was a system established by 
military force and maintained by laws deliberately 
contrived, and the army and the navy of Great 
Britain have been employed to compel the people 
to submit to these laws. To prevent armed insur- 
rection, which has been threatened from time to 
time, the British government has kept in Ireland 
a standing army varying from one hundred and twenty 
thousand men a hundred years ago to fifty thousand 
at the present time — thirty-five thousand regulars and 
fifteen thousand military constabulary ; and, in addi- 
tion to paying exorbitant rents to the landlords, the 
Irish people have had to pay taxes to support this 
armed occupancy. Thus has it come to pass that 
the Irish people are poor, that they have been with- 
out education, that they have no manufactures or 
commerce, and that they hate the British govern- 
ment. 

The English invaded Ireland in the twelfth cen- 



36 IRELAND PRIOR TO THE LAND WAR. 

tury. Prior to that period the country was known 
throughout the civilized world for the excellence 
and number of its institutions of learning, to which 
students flocked from England and the Continent, 
and which sent all over Europe men eminent alike 
for virtue and for scholarship. There was a native 
Parliament, in which the popular voice found copious 
expression; the native law, known as the Brehon 
Code, was fair and just, and contained many admi- 
rable provisions for the protection of life, the security 
of property and the advancement of civilization. 

The ravages of the Danes and other marauders 
and the quarrels of native soldiers, who fought with 
one another when there was no foreign foe at hand, 
had weakened the country, and the English invaders 
did not meet with successful resistance. But they 
encountered gigantic difficulties in subjugating the 
people, who, now under this leader, now under that, 
rose with such strength as they possessed and period- 
ically strove to expel the intruders. 

The right of the English to occupy the soil of 
Ireland was never acquiesced in by the people of 
Ireland. The English did nothing to win the good- 
will of the people, and the annals of century after 
century are only repetitions of the same tragic story 
of rebellion and massacre. The power of England 
constantly waxed and the strength of Ireland con- 
stantly waned. 

The ingenuity of the statesmen of England was 
called into requisition to complete the victories of 



IRELAND PRIOR TO THE LAND WAR. 2>7 

her soldiers. Laws were passed during each suc- 
cessive reign for the perpetuation of the conquest 
so severely accomplished by arms. These laws were 
directed at 

The land ; 

The manufactures ; 

The schools ; 

The Parliament ; 

The religion ; 

The idea of nationality. 

All these laws had only one aim — the reduction 
of the country into a market for the English man- 
ufacturers. 

The lands were confiscated on various pretences, 
as we shall hereafter see ; but the purpose of the 
confiscation was to place the revenue arising from 
the soil in the hands of Englishmen, who would 
spend it in England and not turn it into capital for 
Irish manufactures. 

Every industry which appeared in the country was 
suppressed by the English Parliament as soon as its 
suppression was asked by English manufacturers, 
who would not tolerate competition in Ireland. 

The native schools were suppressed by law because 
they made the people too intelligent to submit to the 
intolerable burdens of foreign hostile legislation. The 
native tongue was by law prohibited. The native 
Parliament was abolished. 

As religion, sincerely cherished, is dearer to the 
human heart than all other possessions, material or 






\i 



38 IRELAND PRIOR TO THE LAND WAR. 

ideal, the invading power assailed the faith of the 
Irish people with a barbarity which even its most 
stubborn enemies have never failed to denounce, 
and which will for ever shock the sensibilities of 
mankind. 

Unfortunately for the victims, the vast majority of 
the people of Ireland were Catholics and the majority 
of the English sovereigns were Protestants. There 
is nothing in the personal history of the English 
Crown to justify the belief that had all the monarchs 
been of one faith, and that the faith of all the Irish peo- 
ple, Ireland would have fared better at the hands of 
her invaders. The makers of laws against religion 
were hypocrites. They avowed themselves the po- 
lice of a creed claiming to be superior to the religion 
preferred by the Irish people ; they were, in truth, only 
land-stealers. The penal laws concerning religion in 
Ireland were mere land-grabbing statutes. The Prot- 
estant English Crown said to the land-owning Irish 
Catholic, " You are worshipping at a false altar. If 
you do not come to mine, I will punish you by con- 
fiscating your land." It was not to save his soul the 
Crown was anxious, but to get his land ; and, to get 
his land, the Crown overthrew his altar. Nine times 
in ten he clung to the altar and lost his land. If the 
Crown had been of another creed and the Irish land- 
owner had been a Protestant, the result would have 
been the same, the method different. The possession 
of the land was the ultimate object, and it was seized 
on every excuse and on none. 



IRELAND PRIOR TO THE LAND WAR, 39 

The extraordinary fertility of the soil made its 
ownership of supreme importance in the scheme of 
conquest. The methods by which it was gradually 
wrested from its natural owners, the laws passed for 
the suppression of education, of religion, of manufac- 
tures, of commerce, of the Irish Parliament, and, what 
was transcendently superior to all these, for the ex- 
tinction of the idea of Irish nationality, may now be 
considered in detail. 



CHAPTER II. 

HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 

UNDER various pretences the English invaders, 
while affecting to govern Ireland for Ire- 
land's good, practically confiscated all the cultivable 
lands of the country. At the close of the seventeenth 
century the lands under cultivation covered an area 
of less than twelve million acres. The confiscations 
for refusal to adopt the creed of the State-Church, 
for attempted insurrection, and for any other fault 
which could be imputed to the people, were as 
follows : 

Acres. 

During the reign of James 1 2,836,837 

At the Restoration 7,800,000 

During 1688 1,060,792 

Total 11,697,629 

In a word, the whole island, with the exception of 
the estates of a few English families, was boldly taken 
away from its natural and rightful owners, and not a 
shilling was granted them in payment for it. 

The land thus confiscated was disposed of by the 
English Crown by three methods : It was given in 
large estates to favorites of the reigning monarch ; it 

40 



HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 4 1 

was sold to English or Scotch colonists and the pro- 
ceeds went into the royal purse ; and it was offered 
gratuitously to other colonists from foreign countries 
upon two conditions — that they should do every- 
thing in their power to drive out the native Irish, and 
that they should not suffer any of the natural owners 
to recover any portion of it as remuneration for ser- 
vice, in return for labor or by the payment of money. 
In the confiscations and the bestowal of the lands 
afterward according to royal caprice was laid the 
foundation of the system of landlordism which exists 
to this day. Many of the persons upon whom estates 
were conferred would not reside in Ireland, and were 
not expected to do so. They were in many instances 
English soldiers whose arms were needed in foreign 
wars ; in other cases they were convivial companions 
of the monarch, and could not be spared from his 
revels ; and in still others they were persons yet 
lower in social character. These newly-created 
landlords appointed agents to manage their estates 
for them ; then was laid the foundation of the system 
of absentee landlords and ever„-present bailiffs. The 
bailiff's duty was to get the highest rent he could for 
every acre, and the landlord's privilege was to spend 
the income thus acquired. Of course he spent none 
of it in Ireland ; even the bailiff's wages he was often 
required to extort after the rent had been collected. 

The Scotch and English colonists were called 
"undertakers;" and as an historical curiosity, as well 
as to illustrate perfectly the manner in which the 



42 HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 

natural owners of the land were to be prevented 
from recovering it, the following royal order is re- 
produced : 

"Articles concerning the English and Scotch under- 
takers, who are to plant their portions with Eng- 
lish' and inland Scottish tenants. 

" i. His Majesty is pleased to grant estates in fee 
farm to them and their heirs. 

" 2. They shall yearly yield unto His Majesty, for 
every proportion of one thousand acres, five pounds 
six shillings and eight pence English, and so ratably 
for the greater proportions ; which is after the rate 
of six shillings and eight pence for every threescore 
English acres. But none of the said undertakers 
shall pay any rent until the expiration of the first two 
years, except the natives of Ireland, who are not sub- 
ject to the charge of transportation. 

" 3. Every undertaker of so much land as shall 
amount to the greatest proportion of two thousand 
acres, or thereabouts, shall hold the same by knight 
service in capite ; and every undertaker of so much 
land as shall amount to the middle proportion of fif- 
teen hundred acres, or thereabouts, shall hold the 
same by knight service as of the castle of Dublin; 
and every undertaker of so much land as shall amount 
to the least proportion of a thousand acres, or there- 
abouts, shall hold the same in common socage ; and 
there shall be no wardships upon the two first de- 
scents of that land. 



HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 43 

"4. Every undertaker of the greatest proportion 
of two thousand acres shall within two years after 
the date of his letters patent build thereupon a castle 
with a strong court or bawn about it; and every un- 
dertaker of the second or middle proportion of fifteen 
hundred acres shall within the same time build a 
stone or brick house thereupon with a strong court 
or bawn about it ; and every undertaker of the least 
proportion of a thousand acres shall within the same 
time make thereupon a strong court or bawn at least ; 
and all the said undertakers shall desire their tenants 
to build houses for themselves and their families near 
the principal castle, house or bawn for their mutual 
defence or strength. . . . 

" 5. The said undertakers, their heirs and assigns, 
shall have ready in their houses at all times a con- 
venient store of arms, wherewith they may furnish 
a competent number of able men for their defence, 
which may be viewed and mustered every half-year, 
according to the manner of England. 

" 6. Every of the said undertakers, English or 
Scotch, before the ensealing of his letters patent, 
shall take the oath of supremacy, . . . and shall also 
conform themselves in religion according to His Maj- 
esty's laws. - • 

" 7. The said undertakers, their heirs and assigns, % 
shall not alien or demise their portions, or any part 
thereof, to the meer Irish, or to such persons as will 
not take the oath ; and to that end a proviso shall be 
inserted in their letters patent." 



\ 



V 



44 HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 

The oath was that of acceptance of the creed of 
the State-Church, which was Protestant. As nine- 
tenths of the Irish people were Catholics, they could 
not take it ; that for ever excluded them from recov- 
ering possession of their land, even as purchasers or 
as heirs. 

The natural owners of the land did not tamely 
submit to its confiscation, and the English Crown 
was compelled to employ troops to drive them off. 
The manner in which the troops complied with the 
orders of the Crown can be most appropriately de- 
scribed in the reports of commanding officers and in 
the words of English historians. 

Malby, an officer of Queen Elizabeth, wrote to 
her: "At Christmas, I marched into their territory 
[Shan Burke's], and, finding courteous dealing with 
them had like to have cut my throat, I thought good 
to take another course ; and so, with determination 
to consume them with fire and sword, sparing neither 
old nor young, I entered their mountains. I burnt 
all their corn and houses and committed to the 
sword all that could be found, where were slain at 
that time above sixty of their best men, and among 
them the best leaders they had. This was Shan 
Burke's country. Then I burnt Ulick Burke's coun- 
ty. In like manner I assaulted a castle where the 
garrison surrendered. I put them to the miser- 
icordia of my soldiers : they were all slain. Thence 
I went on, sparing none which came in my way; 
which cruelty did so amaze their followers that they 



HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 45 

could not tell where to bestow themselves. Shan 
Burke made means to me to pardon him and forbear 
killing of his people. I would not hearken, but went 
on my way. The gentlemen of Clanrickard came to 
me. I found it was but dallying to win time ; so I 
left Ulick as little corn and as few houses standing 
as I left his brother, and what people was found had 
as little favor as the other had. // was all done in 
rain and frost and storm, journeys in such weather 
bringing them the sooner to submission. They are 
humble enough now, and will yield to any terms we 
like to offer them." 

Similar reports were made by others. 

Hollinshed describes the progress of the army : 
" As they went they drove the whole country before 
them into the Ventrie, and by that means they prey- 
ed and took all the cattle in the country, to the num- 
ber of eight thousand kine, besides horses, garrons, 
sheep and goats, and all such people as they met 
they did without mercy put to the swoed. By these 
means the whole country having no cattle nor kine 
left, they were driven to such extremities that for 
want of victuals they were either to die and perish 
for famine or to die under the sword." 

It was lawful to kill " the meer Irish," provided 
the persons slain had not become loyal to the Eng- 
lish Crown. Sir John Davies, one of the officers of 
James I. in Ireland, thus reports : " The real Irish 
were not only accounted aliens, but enemies, and al- 
together out of the protection of the law, so as it 



46 HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 

was no capital offence to kill them ; and this is man- 
ifest by many records." 

' An Englishman committed the blunder of killing 
an Irishman who had become " loyal." He pleaded 
in defence, when on trial, the law that his victim was 
a " meer Irishman," and therefore that it was not a 
crime to kill him. But it was proved that the Irish- 
man was " loyal," and the slayer " was recommitted 
to jail until he shall find pledges to pay five marks 
to our lord the king for the value of said Irishman." 
< If the Irish did not become loyal after being driven 
off their lands, they could be lawfully killed ; if they 
became loyal, they became in effect slaves to the 
Crown, and whoso killed them then had to pay the 
v king for the destruction of his property. 

Thousands, after being driven off their own lands, 
were forced on shipboard, carried to Virginia and 
the West Indies and sold as slaves. Six thousand 
were compelled to go to Sweden and fight for Gus- 
tavus Adolphus. 

The lord deputy, who was directing the expulsion 
of the people from their lands in Ulster in the begin- 
ning of the seventeenth century, thus reported : 
" I have often said and written it is famine that must 
consume the Irish, as our swords and other endeavors 
worked not that speedy effect which is expected ; 
hunger would be a better, because a speedier, weapon 
to employ against them than the sword. ... I 
burned all along the lough (Neagh) within four 
miles of Dungannon, and killed one hundred people, 



HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 47 

sparing none, of what quality, age or sex soever, 
besides many burned to death. We killed man, 
woman and child, horse, beast and whatsoever we 
could find." 

Sir George Carew reports that " harassing the 
country " the English " killed all mankind that were 
found therein. . . . Wee came into Arleaghe woods, 
where wee did the like, not leaving behind us man 
or beast, corn or cattle, except such as had been 
conveyed into the castles." 

The English historian Moryson writes : " No 
spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of the 
towns, and especially in wasted countries, than to 
see multitudes of these poor people, the Irish, dead, 
with their mouths all colored green by eating net- 
tles, docks, and all things they could reach above 
ground." 

Cromwell's savage way of driving the people off 
their lands was not surpassed by the methods of 
any of his predecessors. When the garrison at 
Drogheda surrendered he explicitly promised them 
that their lives would be spared. After the surren- 
der not only were the soldiers butchered in cold 
blood, but Cromwell put to the sword " every man 
that related to the garrison and all the citizens who 
were Irish, man, woman and child," says the English 
historian Clarendon. Cromwell himself wrote to the 
English Parliament : " I wish that all honest hearts 
may give the glory of this to God alone, to whom, 
indeed, the praise of this mercy belongs." y 



48 HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 

Lingard, the English historian, says : " No distinc- 
tion was made between the defenceless inhabitant 
and the armed soldier ; nor could the shrieks and 
prayers of three hundred females who had gathered 
round the great cross preserve them from the 
swords of these ruthless barbarians." 

Cromwell had gone to Ireland the avowed expo- 
nent of liberty of conscience. " I believe in freedom 
of conscience," he cried ; " but if by that you under- 
stand leave to go to mass, by the horns of Beeleze- 
bub, you shall repent your error !" 

Cromwell had at least the virtue of killing his 
victims promptly. He may have been scandalized 
by reading how an English officer, annoyed by the 
presumption of an Irishman who clung to his land 
and his life, tied the man to a Maypole and put out 
his eyes with his thumbs, and he was probably aware 
that children had been kept alive longer than Eng- 
lish interests demanded when the English soldiers 
threw the infants of Irish land-owners up in the air 
and caught them on the points of their bayonets. 
Francis Crosby, an English officer, used to hang 
men, women and children on a tree before his door 
and watch with amusement the infants clinging to 
the long hair of their mothers. 

^ Cromwell understood the value of famine as one 
of the resources of war. He took with him into 
Ireland scythes and sickles to cut down the harvests 
and starve those who escaped his sword. He also 
understood the use of fire on occasion. Some of the 




^—4. 






HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 5 I 

women in Drogheda took refuge in a church-steeple ; 
he put the torch to it. For those who escaped 
sword, famine and fire he had still another resource : 
it was slavery in a distant clime. " I do not think 
thirty escaped with their lives," he wrote from Dro- 
gheda ; " those that did are in safe custody for the 
Barbadoes." 

When Cromwell had done his worst, with all his re- 
sources, some of the natural owners of the Irish land 
still occupied it. Then the English Parliament selected 
one province in the country — the one most barren and 
desolate, Connaught — and to it consigned, on penalty 
of death if they left it, all the people who had sur- 
vived the war of extermination. Some of those who 
were compelled to submit to this order had them- 
selves been engaged in driving off the land its right- 
ful owners ; they were descendants of the English to 
whom the lands had been given previously by the 
English Crown, and they were now compelled to 
submit to the miseries they had helped to inflict on 
the people to whom the land belonged. They peti- 
tioned the Parliament in vain. Among them was a 
grandson of the poet Spenser ; he pleaded the great 
name he bore, but his entreaties were derided. Some 
of the people who refused to leave their land were 
promptly hanged ; hundreds were shipped to the 
West Indies as slaves; some went mad; some com- 
mitted suicide. 

At that time was established, and in this " legal " 
manner, the title by which many of the present race 



52 HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 

of Irish landlords obtained their claims to the estates 
they now hold. An eminent Protestant lawyer of Ire- 
land has said that he supposed no man at the bar of that 
country ever traced an Irish title back to its origin 
without discovering that it was born in confiscation. 
•" The ferocity of the English troops in Ireland did 
not abate with time, nor did the English soldier of a 
hundred years later think any less lightly of " killing 
a meer Irishman." In the Cornwallis correspondence 
will be found an episode as frightful as any that oc- 
curred during the confiscations of the lands. A 
squad of English soldiers forced their way into a 
humble cottage, where they found a young Irishman 
with his aged mother. While her arms encircled the 
boy and her piteous cries resounded in their ears, 
they shot him dead. The officer in command of the 
squad was tried by court-martial and acquitted, the 
defence being that he suspected the young man of 
being a rebel ! 

English legislation, as well as troops, was employ- 
ed to prevent the rightful owners of the land in Ire- 
land from recovering any part of it. This legislation 
is comprised in what are commonly called the " penal 
laws." They were ostensibly enacted in behalf of 
the Protestant religion and for the purpose of sup- 
pressing the Catholic faith in Ireland. Their real 
purpose was to prevent the natural owners of the 
lands from recovering them and from engaging in 
any pursuit of profit or of honor. The vast majority 
of the people were Catholics : every penalty that in- 



HO W THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 53 

genuity could devise was laid on that faith. An ex- 
amination of the statutes reveals only one always- 
present object — to prevent the people from recover- 
ing or acquiring land or other property. They were 
to be reduced to a condition of unlettered serfage. 

The penal laws are thus described by the Prot- 
estant historian Lecky. In reading his summary of 
them truth requires that " Englishman " should be 
substituted for " Protestant," and " Irishman " for 
" Catholic :" \ 

" It required, indeed, four or five reigns to elab- 
orate a system so ingeniously contrived to demoral- 
ize, to degrade and impoverish the people of Ireland. 
By this code the Roman Catholics were absolutely 
excluded from the Parliament, from the magistracy, 
from the corporations, from the bench and from the 
bar. They could not vote at parliamentary elections 
or at vestries. They could not act as constables or 
sheriffs or jurymen, or serve in the army or navy, 
or become solicitors, or even hold the position of 
gamekeeper or watchman. Schools were established 
to bring up their children as Protestants ; and if they 
refused to avail themselves of these, they were delib- 
erately consigned to hopeless ignorance, being ex- 
cluded from the university and debarred, under 
crushing penalties, from acting as schoolmasters, as 
ushers or as private tutors, or from sending their 
children abroad to obtain the instruction they were 
refused at home. They could not marry Protestants ; 
and if such a marriage were celebrated, the priest 



54 HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 

who officiated might be hung. They could not buy 
land, nor inherit it, nor receive it as a gift, from Prot- 
estants, nor hold life-annuities, or leases for more 
than thirty-one years, or any lease on such terms 
that the profits of the land exceeded one-third of 
the rent. If any Catholic householder by his indus- 
try so increased his profits that they exceeded this 
proportion, and did not immediately make a corre- 
sponding increase in his payments, any Protestant 
who gave the information could enter into possession 
of his farm. If any Catholic had secretly purchased 
either his old forfeited estate or any other land, any 
Protestant who informed against him might become 
the proprietor. The few Catholic land-holders who 
remained were deprived of the right which all other 
classes possessed — of bequeathing their land as 
they pleased. If their sons continued Catholics, it 
was divided equally among them. If, however, the 
eldest son consented to apostatize, the estate was 
settled upon him ; the father from that hour became 
only a life-tenant, and lost all power of selling, 
mortgaging or otherwise disposing of it. If the 
wife of a Catholic abandoned the religion of her 
husband, she was immediately free from his control, 
and the chancellor was empowered to assign to her 
a certain portion of her husband's property. If any 
child, however young, professed itself a Protestant, 
it was at once taken from its father's care, and the 
chancellor could oblige the father to declare upon 
oath the value of his property, both real and personal, 



HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 55 

and could assign for the present maintenance and 
future portion of the converted child such propor- 
tion of that property as the court might decree. No 
Catholic could be guardian either to his own chil- 
dren or to those of another person, and therefore a 
Catholic who died while his children were minors 
had the bitterness of reflecting upon his deathbed 
that they must pass into the care of Protestants. 
An annuity of from twenty to forty pounds was 
provided as a bribe for every priest who would 
become a Protestant. To convert a Protestant to 
Catholicism was a capital offence. In every walk of 
life the Catholic was pursued by persecution or 
restriction. Except in the linen trade, he could not 
have more than two apprentices. He could not pos- 
sess a horse of the value of more than five pounds, 
and any Protestant, on giving him five pounds, could 
take his horse. He was compelled to pay double 
to the militia. He was forbidden, except under par- 
ticular conditions, to live in Galway or Limerick. 
In case of war with a Catholic prince, the Catholics 
were obliged to reimburse the damage done by the 
enemy's privateers. . . . To facilitate the discovery 
of offences against the code, two justices of the 
peace might at any time compel any Catholic of 
eighteen years of age to declare when and where he 
last heard mass, what persons were present and who 
officiated ; and if he refused to give evidence, they 
might imprison him for twelve months or until he 
had paid a fine of twenty pounds. ... A graduated 



56 HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 

scale of rewards was offered for the discovery of 
Catholic bishops, priests and schoolmasters, and 
a resolution of the [Irish] House of Commons pro- 
nounced ' the prosecuting and informing against 
papists ' ' an honorable service to the government.' 
. . . Such were the principal articles of this famous 
code. ... It was framed by a small minority of the 
nation for the oppression of the majority who re- 
mained faithful to the religion of their fathers. . . . 
It was framed and enforced, although by the treaty 
of Limerick the Catholics had been guaranteed such 
privileges in the exercise of their religion as they 
enjoyed in the reign of Charles II. ; although the 
sovereign at the same time promised, as soon as his 
affairs would permit, to summon a Parliament in this 
kingdom and endeavor to procure the said Roman 
Catholics such further security in that particular as 
may preserve them from any disturbance on account 
of their religion ; although not a single act of trea- 
son was proved against them ; and although they 
remained passive spectators to two rebellions which 
menaced the very existence of the Protestant dynasty 
in England." 

The first of these laws was passed in 1691. The 
volunteers of '82 abolished some of them; they were 
not finally repealed until the country was about to 
rise in insurrection, in 1829. 

The confiscations deprived the people of Ireland 
of all the land. 

The penal laws deprived them of the right of 



HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THE LAND. 57 

recovering, even by peaceful means, what had been 
taken from them by force. 

The penal laws also deprived them of personal 
property. 

The penal laws deprived them of education. 

Such were the advantages the Irish people obtained 
from the English invaders for six hundred years after . 
the invasion. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE REASON IRELAND HAS NO MANUFAC- 
TURES. 

IT is frequently remarked by observing Americans 
that we get no skilled labor from Ireland. An 
examination of the industrial statistics of that coun- 
try exposes a remarkable fact — that it is a country 
without manufactures. The fact is remarkable be- 
cause Nature is not responsible for it ; and the uni- 
versal development of the vast system of modern 
exchanges makes it more conspicuous. Economists 
have stated again and again that in Ireland there is 
enough water-power to run the machinery of the 
world. That she has no extensive coal-beds does 
not account for the absence of factories, because 
coals can be delivered in Dublin cheaper than in 
Manchester or London ; and France, with her im- 
mense diversity of manufactures, has to import coal. 
On the other hand, the soil of Ireland is capable 
of producing at a minimum of outlay raw material 
which could profitably be manufactured for the home 
and foreign markets ; and, instead of devoting her 
energy in this direction, we find that her one article 
of trade, in which she is relatively insignificant — the 

58 



IRELAND HAS NO MANUFACTURES. 59 

linen — is produced largely from imported flax, her 
own soil not being adapted to the cultivation of the 
best flaxseed. Excepting a few linen-factories, with 
a small number of minor productions scarcely worthy 
classification, she is a country without manufactures. 
She has nothing to sell except the food produced 
by her land ; she has to send abroad, chiefly to Eng- 
land, for everything she buys. A country thus sit- 
uated cannot be a prosperous country. A country 
thus situated cannot furnish skilled labor to the new 
and active world in which so many of her sons have 
sought homes. 

A country in which there is but one means of 
living, and that one means dependent on inexorable 
physical laws, must have periods of suffering. The 
more diversified the forms of remunerative activity 
in which a people are engaged, the more protection 
have they against financial panics ; the more constant 
their prosperity, the more enterprising their capital. 
A country with only one activity, and that farming, 
must be a poor country, doomed to periodical mis- 
ery and to constant poverty. If the almost total 
lack of manufactures in Ireland be her own fault, 
she is not entitled to the sympathy of mankind. If, 
on the contrary, her want of manufactures is a want 
created and maintained by foreign legislation en- 
forced in her territory, the economist will discover 
in her anomalous condition an extraordinary phe- 
nomenon, and the lover of justice, honesty and fair 
play in commerce a striking example of the help- 



60 THE REASON IRELAND 

lessness to which a more powerful country may re- 
duce the victim of prohibitory laws. 

Ireland was not always without manufactures. In 
the United States, in Canada, in Australia, where the 
Irish people are free to choose the forms of industry 
which they will follow, we find them in all the in- 
dustries. As a rule, they are not capitalists, for ob- 
vious reasons ; for the same reasons they are not 
skilled in any of the mechanical trades when they 
immigrate ; but the young Irish enter into all the 
trades, become skilled in them, and, as soon as they 
are able, follow the example of all other national- 
ities : they become manufacturers as soon as they 
get money enough. The charge of idleness made 
against them in Ireland has been emphatically de- 
nied by John Bright, who has borne willing testi- 
mony to their zeal and energy in England and in 
the countries of the Western continent. He says, 
"They are the hardest-working people in the world." 
They lack, manifestly, neither the natural aptitude 
nor the desire to engage in mechanical and other 
manufacturing occupations. 

It must, therefore, be opportunity they lack in 
Ireland. It will be seen that they have been de- 
prived of opportunity by laws enacted with the 
greatest deliberation by the government which still 
claims the right to rule them ; and it is reasonable 
to declare that the interests of the English man- 
ufacturers require that Ireland shall continue to be 
a country without manufactures. The legislation of 



HAS NO MANUFACTURES. 6 1 

England for Ireland has uniformly been in the in- 
terest of the English manufacturers. It is perfectly 
natural that it should be. 

If the United States Congress should attempt to 
make a discriminating tariff for the purpose of giv- 
ing one group of States commercial advantages over 
another group, the integrity of the National Union 
would reasonably be considered in danger. If, to 
foster the development of a certain industry in Ohio, 
prohibitory duties were laid on the exportation of 
all articles of that nature from Pennsylvania and 
New York, it is extremely probable that the doc- 
trine of secession would take on an almost be- 
nign aspect in New York and Pennsylvania. The 
fact is unquestioned and unquestionable that the 
British government destroyed and effectually pro- 
hibited manufactures in Ireland — an integral part 
of the British empire — for the benefit of the English 
manufacturers ; yet there are careful and reflecting 
Americans who wonder why Ireland has no man- 
ufactures, and why the Irish people talk about their 
right to a legislature of their own to enact laws for 
the regulation of their domestic affairs ! 

Let us examine the record. 

The exchanges which Ireland had with other 
countries before the suppression of her trade were 
the exportation of cattle, living and cured ; the ex- 
portation of hides; the exportation of wool, raw 
and manufactured ; the exportation of glass, tallow, 
and many other articles of less value in the aggre- 



62 THE REASON IRELAND 

gate. The countries to which these exports were 
carried in Irish ships were England, the American 
colonies and the countries of the East between which 
and the West of Europe commerce had sprung up. 
The cattle trade gave Ireland a large revenue ; the 
woollen industry became a source of increasing 
wealth with the gradual enlargement of the foreign 
markets, especially the convenient market of the 
rapidly-growing American colonies. Had this trade 
not been meddled with, it would have enriched Ire- 
land with capital to invest in the many new articles 
of commerce which the growth of the arts, the de- 
mands of extending civilization and the application 
of the physical sciences to industry were, and are, 
still creating or multiplying. But English law was 
invoked by the English manufacturers to suppress 
Irish trade for their benefit ; and, following that sup- 
pression, capital, having nothing to do in Ireland, 
went out of the country and did not return. With- 
out capital, production is impossible ; without pro- 
duction, there can be no skilled labor. Without the 
exchanges which capital and skilled labor jointly 
produce, a country is necessarily poor. 

The principle which was always present in Eng- 
lish economical legislation for Ireland was that Ire- 
land should be the private and exclusive market of 
the English manufacturer. Nothing should be pro- 
duced in Ireland which could be sent from England 
into Ireland ; nothing should be sent from Ireland 
into England which could be produced in England ; 



HAS NO MANUFACTURES. 63 

Ireland should not be suffered to sell anything in 
any foreign market which the English could sell 
there ; Ireland should not buy from any one but 
England. These resolves reduced the economical 
relations of Ireland with mankind to a very simple 
basis. They were faithfully carried out by the Eng- 
lish Parliament. The exportation of cattle was for- 
bidden. Next the exportation of cured meats was 
forbidden. Gradually all exports were forbidden ex- 
cept what the English manufacturers wanted : they 
were quite willing that the linen trade should be en- 
couraged in Ireland, because it was inconvenient for 
them and too expensive, as the flaxseed would have 
to be imported. And when the American war broke 
out the trade of Ireland was utterly annihilated ; she 
was not permitted to send anything to the colonies, 
and she could receive nothing from them except 
what was passed through English ports, although 
the ships from the colonies to England had to sail 
by her own doors. How vast the commerce of Ire- 
land, unchecked, might have become may be imag- 
ined when we recall that of her thirty-two coun- 
ties nineteen are maritime and the rest are washed 
by copious rivers that empty into the sea. 

The money that had formerly been carried back 
from foreign ports by Irish ships ceased to come ; 
and Swift says that the currency of Ireland, before 
the suppression of her trade, included the coins 
of every sovereign in Europe. The shrinkage in 
the circulation soon affected the home market : as 



64 THE REASON IRELAND 

the people were not permitted to sell, they had little 
to buy with ; and it was not long after the closing of 
the foreign markets to Ireland by her foreign govern- 
ment that her home market became stagnant. This 
is the picture a capable writer of that period (Hely 
Hutchinson, a Protestant, and provost of Trinity Col- 
lege) gave of the condition of Ireland just a hundred 
years ago : " The present state of Ireland teems with 
every circumstance of national poverty. Whatever 
the land produces is greatly reduced in value ; wool 
is fallen one-half in its usual price, wheat one-third, 
black cattle of all kinds in the same proportion, and 
hides in a much greater; buyers are not had without 
difficulty at those low rates, and from the principal 
fairs men commonly return with the commodities 
they brought there ; rents are everywhere reduced, 
and in many places it is impossible to collect them ; 
the farmers are all distressed, and many of them 
have failed; when leases expire tenants are not easily 
found ; the landlord is often obliged to take his lands 
into his own hands for want of bidders at reasonable 
rents, and finds his estate fallen one-fourth of its 
value. The merchant justly complains that all bus- 
iness is at a stand, that he cannot discount his bills, 
and that neither money nor paper circulates. In 
this and the last year above twenty thousand man- 
ufacturers in this metropolis were reduced to beg- 
gary for want of employment. They were for a 
considerable length of time supported by alms ; a 
part of the contribution came from England, and 



HAS NO MANUFACTURES. 65 

this assistance was much wanting, from the general 
distress of all ranks of the people in this country. 
Public and private credit is annihilated. . . . This 
kingdom has long been declining. The annual de- 
ficiency of its revenues for the payment of the pub- 
lic expenses has been for many years supplied by 
borrowing ; the American rebellion, which consider- 
ably diminished the demand for our linen, an em- 
bargo on provisions for three years and highly in- 
jurious to our victualling trade, the increasing drain 
of remittances to England for rents, salaries, profits 
of offices and the payment of forces abroad, have 
made the decline more rapid." 

It will not escape the observation of Americans 
that, while England continued to destroy the trade 
and commerce of Ireland — as if she were an erlemy 
at war, while, in fact, she was profoundly at peace — 
England continued to tax Ireland like the most loyal 
and most abject of subjects, and even required her to 
pay part of the expense of the American Revolution, 
with whose avowed objects the four-fifths of the Irish 
people openly sympathized, their sympathy being ex- 
pressed in public meetings and in messages trans- 
mitted to this country, in which Irish valor was so 
enthusiastically enlisted in the patriot cause. So 
deeply was Irish sympathy valued, and so anxious 
were the Americans to retain the good-will of the 
Irish people, that the Continental Congress sent to 
the Irish people an address, in which it declared : 
" You have been friendly to the rights of mankind ; 



66 THE REASON IRELAND 

and we acknowledge with pleasure and gratitude that 
the Irish nation has produced patriots who have 
highly distinguished themselves in the cause of hu- 
manity and America. On the other hand, we are 
not ignorant that the labors and manufacture of Ire- 
land, like those of the sfikworm, were of little mo- 
ment to herself, but served only to give luxury to 
those who neither toil nor spin," alluding to the con- 
stant over-taxation of the country for the support of 
a foreign government on its own soil, and for pen- 
sions for favorites of the Crown, some of whom were 
infamous persons of both sexes and most of whom 
had never even set foot on Irish soil to bless or curse 
it. " We know that you are not without your griev- 
ances," the address continues. " We sympathize with 
you in your distress, and are pleased to find that the 
design of subjugating us persuaded the administra- 
tion to dispense to Ireland some vagrant rays of min- 
isterial sunshine. The tender mercies of the govern- 
ment have long been cruel toward you. We hope 
the patient abiding of the meek may not always be 
forgotten, and God grant that the iniquitous system' 
of extirpating liberty may soon be defeated !" 

" Vagrant rays of ministerial sunshine " was a very 
apt description of the few concessions which the 
English government reluctantly granted to Ireland 
while under the pressure of war with the colonies 
and threatened invasion by France. A few of the 
heavy duties on some minor articles for which the 
war created a higher demand in England were mod- 



HAS NO MANUFACTURES. 69 

ified or removed, but a still larger boon was yet to 
be conceded. 

The Irish Parliament sat in College Green, in the 
building which is now the Bank of Ireland, before 
which, as he was driven past it last summer, Charles 
Stewart Parnell reverently uncovered his head while 
his countrymen filled the air with their cheers ; and, 
although English law had deprived eight-tenths of 
the Irish people of the right to sit in it as members 
or to vote for members, it contained a patriot minor- 
ity, led by Grattan and his followers, who took ad- 
vantage of the crisis in the affairs of Great Britain to 
insist on legislative independence for their country. 
It is needless to recount here the successive laws by 
which the mass of the people were shut out of Par- 
liament; enough that a hundred years ago only 
members of the Church of England could sit in it or 
vote for those who were candidates. The Catholics 
in Ireland were seven-tenths of the population ; the 
Presbyterians and other dissenters were another 
tenth : all were excluded. The patriot Protestant 
party had stoutly resisted the attempts of the gov- 
ernment to send troops to America ; and Grattan, in 
a famous debate, spoke of this country as the " only 
hope of Ireland, and the only refuge of the liberties 
of mankind." The troops were nevertheless ordered 
to cross the sea, and then a new condition existed in 
Ireland. 

For the first time since the conquest, in the twelfth 
century, she was practically rid of English soldiers. 



70 THE REASON IRELAND 

She needed none for the preservation of internal 
peace ; but there were loud threats of French in- 
vasion, and volunteers were called for. Under the 
laws the Catholics could not bear arms ; but after the 
Presbyterians and the Protestants began enrolling, a 
few Catholics were admitted to the ranks. In a short 
time sixty thousand men were enrolled ; they accept- 
ed arms and ammunition from the government, but 
declined commissions and elected their own officers. 
The volunteers, having no foreign French foe to fight, 
turned their attention to politics, and they made, in 
convention, these specific demands : The abolition 
of all restrictions on Irish trade ; the restoration of 
the independence of the Irish Parliament, which had 
been taken away by an act passed in 1495 forbidding 
the Irish Parliament to assemble for any purpose ex- 
cept to pass the measures proposed by the English 
Crown — measures for the ruin of Ireland ; and the en- 
largement of the constitutional privileges of the coun- 
try to include all classes of the people. The Crown 
had no means of resisting these demands while the 
American war lasted. The volunteers drew up be- 
fore the Parliament building, where the agents of the 
English government sat as the ministers of the Irish 
Parliament and people. On the gaping mouths of 
their cannon were suspended placards bearing the 
suggestive words, " Free Trade or This ;" and thus 
they awaited the surrender of the Crown. " Free 
trade" did not mean what is now popularly under- 
stood by that term : it meant simply the abolition of 



HAS NO MANUFACTURES. 7 1 

the restrictions which had been laid upon all Irish 
commerce, domestic and foreign. Powerless, the 
agents of the Crown yielded ; the trade restrictions 
were abolished. Then the volunteers demanded that 
the Irish Parliament be given the right to make all the 
laws for Ireland. Again they were victorious ; and 
for eighteen years the Parliament that sat in College 
Green, although composed of members of only one 
Church, and that the Church by law established, made 
laws for Ireland, and made them, in the main, wisely. 
The third demand of the volunteers was not granted 
— the political emancipation of their Roman Catholic 
brethren. Had Washington not caught Cornwallis at 
Yorktown, that right too could have been obtained : 
unfortunately for Ireland, the American war termi- 
nated too soon. The government trifled with the 
volunteers until after peace was declared ; then, the 
troops returning from America to Ireland, the vol- 
unteers were disbanded, and four-fifths of the Irish 
people remained until 1829 deprived of civil and re- 
ligious liberty, while paying enormous taxes to the 
government that thus kept them in serfage. 

For eighteen years the Parliament of Ireland was 
independent of the English Crown in its right to 
initiate laws for the domestic government of Ire- 
land ; and during that period " it was, on the whole," 
writes the historian Lecky, 1 "a vigilant and intel- 
ligent guardian of the interest of the country." It 

1 Author of Rationalism in Europe, History of England in the 
Eighteenth Century, etc. 



72 THE REASON IRELAND 

devoted itself with assiduity to the revival of the 
industries of Ireland and encouraged those which 
were best calculated to thrive under the then exist- 
ing commercial conditions. It expended taxation 
judiciously for public works and improved the in- 
land navigation. In ten years, from 1782 to 1792, 
the exports more than doubled. Sixteen years later 
Lord Clare wrote that there " is not a nation in the 
habitable globe which has advanced in cultivation 
and commerce, in agriculture and manufactures, with 
the same rapidity in the same period." Could any 
stronger argument be made for the expediency of 
permitting Ireland to try once more the experiment 
of making her own domestic laws on her own soil ? 
But it was intolerable to the English manufac- 
turers that a rival should again be found in the 
country whose manufactures they had once suc- 
ceeded in destroying, and they determined to de- 
stroy them again. A different method was required. 
The creation of capital in Ireland which would be 
invested in Irish factories was most to be feared. 
If the Irish Parliament continued independent, it 
would comply with the wishes of the majority of 
the Protestants and Presbyterians and emancipate 
the Catholics. Their admission into Parliament 
would make that body thoroughly national, since 
all classes of the people would then be represent- 
ed in it. A thoroughly national Parliament would 
speedily reform all the laws by which Ireland had 
been reduced to the condition of a private market 



HAS NO MANUFACTURES. 73 

for the English manufacturer. There would be a 
reform of the land laws. The record by which the 
land of the Irish people had been boldly stolen from 
them would be examined — with what results, it was 
too easy to foresee. If the land were restored to 
the natural and legal owners, the money received 
for the fruits of the earth would belong to the peo- 
ple residing in Ireland, instead of being drawn out 
of the country by a foreign government and absentee 
landlords, to be spent in England or on the Conti- 
nent. Peasant proprietary meant home capital in 
Ireland for the creation of manufactures which would 
interfere with the prosperity of the English man- 
ufacturers. The creation of capital in Ireland to be 
invested in productive industry was to be prevented 
at any cost and by resort to any expedient. The 
only certain expedient was the abolition of the Irish 
Parliament. 

The bill by which the Parliament was abolished 
was called the " Act of Legislative Union with Great 
Britain," and it was passed in 1 800. Since then there 
has been no Parliament in Ireland. 

As an equivalent, Ireland has one hundred and 
five seats in the imperial House of Commons, which 
is composed of six hundred and fifty-two members. 
Less than a fifth of that body, how can the Irish 
members, even if acting as a unit in aims and meth- 
ods, accomplish anything for the benefit of the trade 
of Ireland ? 

Had the woollen trade not been destroyed in 1699, 



74 THE REASON IRELAND 

its remarkable development and the favoring natural 
conditions of the country must speedily have laid 
the solid foundations for many other industries in 
addition to those which existed with it. The Irish 
then had ships, and the harbors of the island were 
crowded with masts ; the Irish flag was met on the 
highways of the ocean until forbidden to be seen 
there ; the natural capital of the country was being 
utilized at home, and must have expanded its activ- 
ity into new fields of occupation had it been left 
free. Had the woollen trade not been annihilated, 
it is entirely reasonable to say that Ireland would 
to-day fill a place in history very different from that 
to which her long series of industrial and political 
misfortunes have consigned her. Instead of being a 
country without manufactures, tall chimneys would 
smoke in her cities ; the incalculable water-power 
that courses through her valleys would be turning 
myriad wheels ; her cabins would be cheerful with 
thrift and her children's cheeks red with plenty ; her 
farmers would have innumerable exchanges at home 
for which they would sell the fruits of the earth. 
There would be no famines, for money enough would 
circulate in the country to buy food for all in a land 
that can feed many times its own population. In- 
stead of " profound indigence and chronic anarchy," 
we should behold there peace, prosperity and all the 
blessings, domestic and political, which only peace 
and prosperity can insure. 

It is not enough to say that if England destroyed 



HAS NO MANUFACTURES. 75 

the woollen trade, she encouraged the linen trade. 
, For reasons too obvious for assertion, it was the 
woollen, and not the linen, trade that would have 
developed parallel industries in Ireland and built the 
edifice of diversified productiveness. Venice and 
the other Italian states carried on the manufacture 
of wool until the countries producing the raw mate- 
rial manufactured it; then the Italian manufacture 
dwindled into insignificance. The Flemings under- 
sold the Italians, being nearer the wool-growing 
countries ; then England undersold the Flemings for 
the same reason. The linen trade has never ex- 
pired, but it has been of comparatively little sig- 
nificance in promoting other industries. So long as 
money has to be sent out of the country for the best 
flaxseed, it is impossible that it should be effeotual 
in national development. 

When Ireland was robbed of her manufactures, 
her trade, in the words of Swift, was " glorious and 
flourishing." She has never recovered from the 
shock, nor has it ever been possible that she should. 
The only source of profit left was the land ; that was 
not owned by the people. The owners have done 
nothing to promote the establishment of manufac- 
tures. The landlord class are exclusively a con- 
suming class. 

From official returns it appears that there are only 
67,744 persons, out of a population of 5,000,000, 
employed in textile industries in Ireland, and of 
these 60,000 are in 149 flax-factories. There are 



76 THE REASON IRELAND 

8 cotton-factories, 60 woollen-factories, 1 worsted- 
factory, 4 hemp-factories, 11 jute-factories, 2 silk- 
factories; in all, 235 factories for textile products. 
Even in the linen trade Ireland has not of late years 
kept her lead. In 1868 the number of flax-factories in 
England and Wales was 128; in Scotland, 134; and 
in Ireland, 143. In 1875 the number in England 
and Wales was 141, in Scotland 159, against 149 in 
Ireland. In 1868 there were 13 cotton-factories in 
Ireland; in 1875, only 8. The poplin trade has not 
declined, but it has not grown. There has been an 
inconsiderable increase in silk. There has been an 
increase in the jute-manufacture ; 1 1 factories are re- 
ported in 1875, against 2 in 1868, and the persons 
employed have risen from 20 to 2000. There is also 
a slight increase in hemp. And what of all the 
other manufactured articles that enter into the daily 
life of even the common people? Ireland has to 
buy them all from England — millinery, silk, gloves, 
hats, cloths, cottons, muslins, ribbons, soap, candles, 
iron, hardware, glass, furniture. 

No more eloquent presentation of Ireland's pov- 
erty, arising from her want of exchanges, can be 
constructed than that which is found in the total 
of her exports and imports. The total value of 
her exports in the latest available official figures is 
^238,452; the total of her imports, ^7,901,899. Had 
she home manufactures, a large proportion of this im- 
mense money balance on the wrong side would be 
kept at home and used for the prosperity of the 



HAS NO MANUFACTURES. "/ 7 

country. So long as a foreign legislature, in which 
she is without effectual representation, continues to 
neglect, or, when not neglecting, to " coerce," her, 
there can be no adjustment of this wrong balance. 

It was to be expected that the Land League, 
especially after the passage of the bill which prom- 
ised but did not afford the only true solution of the 
Irish question — peasant proprietary — should under- 
take an effort to revive manufactures in Ireland. A 
home-manufacture association was formed, with 
branches throughout Ireland ; and at the great 
national convention held in Dublin, # over which 
Charles Stewart Parnell presided, and which was 
composed of delegates chosen by the Land League, 
he said that if Ireland had her own Parliament, she 
could foster and protect her industries as the United 
States protected theirs, but under the rule of a for- 
eign legislature Ireland could do nothing by law 
either to create or to promote manufactures. " But," 
he continued, " we can protect our home manufac- 
tures and encourage new ones by our unwritten law, 
by the public and organized opinion of the great 
majority of the Irish people, in accordance with 
whose opinions all laws governing Ireland ought to 
be made. There are indirect methods of protection. 
Let us buy nothing abroad which we can get at 
home ; what we must buy abroad let us buy in 
America ; and let us buy nothing in England." A 
resolution embodying this declaration was unan- 
imously adopted, and its spirit was instantly felt 



78 IRELAND HAS NO MANUFACTURES. 

throughout the country. Advertisements appeared 
in the leading journals announcing Irish manufac- 
tures; the shop-windows were filled with goods 
made at home ; the various corporations and unions 
advertising for supplies required that where the arti- 
cles called for could be made in Ireland, only the 
Irish-made should be received ; and several compa- 
nies were formed for manufactures in the cities. 
Shopkeepers who imported what they could get 
at home were quietly "boycotted," and, short as 
was the interval between the meeting of the national 
convention and the suppression of the League by 
the government, it had succeeded in awaking in the 
minds of the people another incentive to struggle 
determinedly to the end for the recovery of their 
inalienable right to make their own domestic laws 
on their own soil. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HOW THE PEOPLE LOST THEIR PARLIAMENT. 

AS the next agitation in Ireland will be for the 
restoration of the national Parliament, it is de- 
sirable that the manner in which that Parliament was 
abolished, in 1800, should be clearly understood. 

Ireland is the only British dependency in which 
there is not a legislature for making domestic laws. 
The Home-Rule demand in Ireland is that that 
country be placed in the same relation to the British 
Crown as are all its other dependencies — in the same 
relation which each State of the American federation 
holds to the national government. Each American 
State has its own legislature for the enactment of 
laws which affect only the State, while the Congress 
at Washington makes the laws which affect all the 
States. The Home-Rule demand in Ireland is that 
she be given her own home legislature to make those 
laws which affect her only, while the imperial Par- 
liament should continue to make the laws for the 
general government of the empire. If the functions 
now discharged by each State legislature were usurp- 
ed by Congress, Americans would quickly realize 

79 



80 HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 

the reasonableness of the demand for Home Rule in 
Ireland. The Home-Rule agitators there have ask- 
ed nothing except that Ireland make on her own 
soil, in a legislature elected by all of her own people, 
the laws which regulate her domestic affairs. Ire- 
land, in making this demand, simply asks the priv- 
ilege of attending to her own housekeeping instead 
of having it ordered and disordered by the head of 
the house across the street. As to the affairs of the 
street itself the heads of both houses should consult. 

England can keep her own house on the one side 
of the Channel ; Ireland wants to keep her house on 
the opposite side of the Channel. In matters outside 
their respective houses they should be required to 
consult for the common good. 

In their present connection England is simply a 
tax-assessor and tax-collector in Ireland, and charges 
so exorbitant a commission that the employer would 
like to dispense with her services and substitute some 
of the family to attend to the business for consider- 
ably less pay. 

History is wanting in evidence that one country 
ever assessed, collected and expended taxes in an- 
other country economically, wisely or honestly. 

The abolition of the Irish Parliament was accom- 
plished by corruption and misrepresentation. Eng- 
lish statesmen have affirmed this so often, and the 
official records of the government so boldly confess 
it, that it is useless to repeat it by way of argument 
for the reparation of the gigantic wrong then inflict- 



HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. SI 

ed. But, as Lord Cornwallis — of whose achieve- 
ments in this country we have heard something — 
was the chief officer of the Crown in Ireland when 
the Parliament was abolished, it will be interesting to 
American readers to hear the story of that event as 
it were from his own lips. 

It is not true that the Irish Parliament ever was a 
national Parliament as we now understand that term, 
because the entire people of Ireland were not repre- 
sented in it. But it began to show a national spirit 
when Sir Edward Poynings was the chief officer of 
the English Crown in that country, and to extinguish 
it he procured the passage by the English Parliament 
of what is known as Poynings's law. It was, in sub- 
stance, that the Irish Parliament should meet only 
when the king of England desired it to meet, that it 
should meet only at his pleasure, and that when it 
had done his business in Ireland the members should 
go home. That law was passed in England in 1495 ; 
of course it had to be accepted in Ireland. A Par- 
liament thus fettered was indeed no Parliament, but 
in course of time astute men in it found ways to do 
slight favors for the country without the previous 
permission of the Crown ; and when the religious 
fanaticism of the subsequent period introduced new 
elements of distress into Irish life, it was deemed pru- 
dent to expel the Catholics from their seats and to 
deprive them of the right to vote for Protestants who 
were candidates. Yet the Catholics were seven- 
tenths of the population, according to Lord Corn- 



82 HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST 

wallis. A Parliament which contains no represent- 
atives of that proportion of the people of a country- 
can scarcely be designated a national Parliament 

But there were factors in its composition which 
rendered it less than representative of the minority 
who were eligible. Two hundred and sixteen mem- 
bers represented only manors. Manor-proprietors 
who sent into the Commons men acceptable to the 
government were rewarded with peerages, and thus 
the Upper and Lower Houses were simultaneously 
degraded and corrupted. Still further to withdraw 
the Parliament from public opinion, should any be 
developed by events, the Lower House, unless dis- 
solved by the Crown, continued for an entire reign. 
The Irish Parliament of George III. continued for 
thirty-three years. 

Nevertheless, in the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
tury the Irish Parliament began to feel the faint 
throbs of a national pulse. Supine under their 
yoke, the Catholics, having no share in the govern- 
ment, devoted themselves as best they could to those 
forms of production which were possible in a coun- 
try in which manufactures might easily be promoted 
with capital. The Presbyterians, suffering like the 
Catholics on account of their religious views, en- 
gaged largely in manufacture, especially in the 
North ; and, although the land had been confiscated 
and Catholics could not even buy it at any price, the 
English who had settled on the estates taken from 
the native owners became interested in the material 



HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 83 

growth of a country which they intended to make 
their home. Enough money was in circulation to 
keep a healthy feeling between the agricultural and 
the manufacturing classes, and some of the manufac- 
tures attained such proportions as to arouse the jeal- 
ousy of the English producers, who immediately 
appealed to the king and the Parliament of England 
to suppress in Ireland every manufacture which 
would rival any in England, and to tolerate in Ire- 
land only such industries as would help the English 
market. In principle, the Irish should be permitted 
to make only such articles as the English could not 
sell to them. Law after law was passed in England 
for the destruction of Irish manufactures ; the fin- 
ishing blow was given in the beginning of the eigh- 
teenth century by the prohibition of the last that 
remained, the woollen trade. Irish ships, which 
had been met on every ocean highway, were ex- 
cluded from the sea, and the country sank into 
abject poverty, whose depths reached the famine- 
pits at frequent intervals. 

The vitality of the Irish must have astonished 
their foreign government. Commerce by water was 
practically abolished except with England, but the 
domestic trade revived slightly from time to time, 
and as a little capital came to the despondent man- 
ufacturers they began to appeal to the Irish Parlia- 
ment to help them by endeavoring to obtain a mod- 
ification of the laws by which Irish industry had been 
destroyed. These manufacturers were chiefly Prot- 



84 HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 

estants, and they received countenance — in some 
degree at least — from the English land-owners in 
Ireland who had money to spare ; while the Presby- 
terians, who were so busy in Ulster, were strength- 
ened by accessions from Scotland, Irish land and 
water-power being so cheap that many availed them- 
selves of the chance to better their condition by em- 
igrating from the neighboring country, bringing at 
least some money into Ireland. It was the Prot- 
estant and Presbyterian manufacturers who first im- 
bued the Irish Parliament with national sympathy 
and aspiration. 

It is proper to say " Protestant and Presbyter- 
ian," because in those days Presbyterians were not 
Protestants : that designation belonged exclusively to 
members of the Church by law established. It is 
worthy of mention, for justice' sake, that it was the 
Protestants, and not the Presbyterians, w T ho founded 
Orangeism in Ireland : neither Catholics nor Pres- 
byterians were eligible for admission to the original 
Orange lodges. The object of Orangeism was one 
toward which the Presbyterians had shown decided 
animosity — the perpetuation of English rule in Ire- 
land ; on the contrary, the Presbyterians were accused, 
and justly, of downright democratic tendencies. 

The temper of the Irish Parliament in the second 
half of the eighteenth century was one to give the 
English Crown some solicitude. Lords were sent 
over as viceroys, and they selected as their represent- 
atives in the two Houses the ablest men who could 



HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 8? 

be induced to accept official posts, with the under- 
standing that their duty was to the king of England, 
and not to the people of Ireland. Gradually an op- 
position had grown bold, energetic and sagacious ; 
while a literature outside Parliament, of which Swift 
and Molyneux were the parents, helped to organ- 
ize public opinion, which reacted upon Parliament. 
When the American war broke out there was un- 
disguised joy among the masses of the Irish people ; 
the courage of the opposition in Parliament received 
substantial access of resolution, although the prevail- 
ing hypocrisy in public affairs required that formal 
sympathy should be expressed with the Crown in its 
reverses ; but the victories of the rebels were sin- 
cerely celebrated with prudent decorum by the 
patriots in and out of Parliament. 

The king's necessities in America precipitated an 
altogether unprecedented state of affairs in Ireland. 
All the troops that could be sent to the colonies were 
urgently needed there, and the regulars in Ireland 
were demanded, although, with invasion threatened 
by France, their withdrawal was a confessed men- 
ace to the safety of the Crown in Ireland. Neverthe- 
less, they were withdrawn after a debate which no stu- 
dent of great oratory can have missed — that in which 
Flood appeared as the advocate of the Crown and 
Grattan as the exponent of the sympathy of the Irish 
people with the American rebels. Flood had enjoyed 
the confidence of all classes of the people until he 
entered the Irish Cabinet ; from that moment he was 

6 



88 HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 

looked upon with suspicion ; and when he described 
the troops to be sent out from Ireland to America as 
" armed negotiators," Grattan poured out upon him 
a withering invective from whose effects he never re- 
covered, characterizing him as standing " with a met- 
aphor in his mouth and a bribe in his pocket, a cham- 
pion against the rights of America, the only hope of 
Ireland, the refuge of the liberties of mankind." The 
regulars having been sent, Ireland was actually with- 
out defence, and the formation of volunteers began 
with the consent of the government. " The cry to 
arms," writes Lecky, "passed through the land and 
was speedily responded to by all parties and all 
creeds. Beginning among the Protestants of the 
North, the movement soon spread, though in a less 
degree, to other parts of the island, and the war of 
religions and castes that had so long divided the 
people vanished as a dream." 

The character of the volunteers was unique. Fur- 
nished with arms by the government, they paid their 
own expenses, refused commissions from the Crown, 
elected their own officers, and became speedily a 
threat instead of a defence. Having no battles to 
fight with France, they devoted their moral force to 
coercing the English government; and with their 
formidable numbers, estimated to have been from 
sixty thousand to a hundred thousand, armed, equip- 
ped and drilled, with not a battalion in either island 
to confront them, they became the masters of Par- 
liament and compelled it to assume a virtue which 



HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 89 

it had not: they compelled it to nationalize itself. 
Poynings's law was still in force ; they demanded its 
repeal. All the prohibitory laws which had strangled 
industry and trade in Ireland were still in force; they 
demanded their repeal. The penal laws by which 
seven-tenths of their countrymen were excluded from 
participation in the government of their country were 
still in force ; they demanded their repeaW 

It has always been characteristic of English deal- 
ings with Ireland never to grant her any concession 
except under compulsion of force, and then to grant 
less than is demanded. It was only as a preventive 
of insurrection, the duke of Wellington told the stub- 
born dullard who wore the crown in 1829, that Cath- 
olic emancipation was conceded; but coupled with it 
was a suffrage law which disfranchised many of those 
who had become voters while the Irish Parliament 
was independent, as we shall soon see it. The move- 
ment to effect repeal of the Act of Union would prob- 
ably have succeeded had O'Connell not been too old 
and feeble to maintain the vigor of the people. The 
present first minister of Great Britain is authority for 
the confession, openly made, that the abolition of the 
Irish Church Establishment, the hoary relic of penal 
law, was made necessary by Fenianism, which set out 
on a different errand. When the secret records of 
these disturbed days shall be uncovered by another 
generation, or when their story is told by a candid 
politician, the world will read that the Land Act 
of 1 88 1 was wrung from the Crown by ministerial 



go HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 

assurance that if some relief were not allowed the 
Irish tenants insurrection would inevitably ensue. 

To resist the demands of the volunteers in 1782 
was impossible ; to grant them all the Crown would 
not consent. But Poynings's law was repealed ; the 
Irish Parliament was conceded the exclusive right to 
legislate for Ireland ; the trade restrictions were all 
removed. ^Jput the third demand — political equality 
for all classes of the people — was withheld ; and be- 
fore the volunteers could coerce it the government 
disbanded them. 

We have reached the Irish Parliament as Corn- 
wallis found it. It had enjoyed independence for 
sixteen years. His mission was to abolish it be- 
cause its independence had unfettered the manufac- 
turers of Ireland, to the anger and injury of the 
English manufacturers ; because there was every 
reason to believe that, as it had allowed the Cath- 
olics the right to vote for members, it would soon 
allow them the right to be members and to enter 
the race of life on the same terms as those possessed 
by the non-Catholic minority; and because there was 
danger that when all the people united in the gov- 
ernment of their country in a native congress, they 
would dispense with the services of a foreign Crown. 
It was necessary, therefore, to abolish the independ- 
ent Irish Parliament in order to consolidate the Brit- 
ish empire. 

All representative bodies fluctuate in the relative 
merit of their personnel. No country has always 



HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST 9 1 

been able to command at all times the services of 
its ablest and most virtuous sons. When the Irish 
Parliament, with eighty thousand volunteers at its 
back, in 1782 declared itself independent, removed 
the restrictions which a foreign Parliament had placed 
upon Irish manufactures and commerce, and wisely 
fostered every form of industry, it contained a very 
large proportion of able and determined, men, al- 
though the vast majority of the people had no voice 
in its halls; in 1798, when Cornwallis proceeded 
on his mission to abolish it, many of the ablest 
members of the former period were absent. Nei- 
ther Grattan nor Curran was there — the one the most 
effective wit, the other the most eminent patriot and 
the most powerful orator, of the time. In 1782 the 
government councillors were weak and common- 
place, while the patriots had the genius, the el- 
oquence, the courage, of the country on their side ; 
in 1798 the government had Castlereagh for chief 
secretary, and a host of mercenary men whose facul- 
ties had been sharpened by necessity and who were 
as keen as they were unscrupulous. In 1782 the 
Parliament was literally on fire with patriotic ardor, 
and men were ready and anxious to make sacrifices, 
if necessary, of personal interests for the general 
good of the whole people; in 1798 a spasm of sel- 
fish office-seeking was in progress, and place and 
promotion were the chief objects of a large number 
in Parliament and of their friends, who hoped to ob- 
tain one or the other through their influence. 



92 HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 

Let it not be forgotten that the Parliament in 1798 
contained no representatives of the majority of the 
Irish people, and that the minority represented was 
composed in considerable part of manor-proprietors 
and their placemen, of Englishmen, Scotchmen and 
other aliens who had no permanent interest in Ire- 
land. It ought also be recalled that the Upper House 
in Ireland never contained a dozen men of mark. 
The Protestant lords saw in the Protestant Crown 
exclusive privileges for themselves which they could 
not hope for after the Catholics of Ireland obtain- 
ed their political rights ; a few Catholic lords were 
vacillating and nerveless, incapable of serving their 
country and willing to sell out her independence for 
their own profit. 

The task of Cornwallis was not so difficult, there- 
fore, as it would have been a few years earlier. The 
English agents, who had been acquainted with the 
designs of the Crown, had ample time to pack the 
Lower House as fully as possible with persons ex- 
pressly selected for the object in view. The borough 
system quite as truly as gold corrupted and extin- 
guished the Irish Parliament. It was declared on 
the floor of the Lower House that less than ninety 
individuals returned a majority of that body. Yet so 
tenacious was the little flicker of national spirit which 
still burned there that as soon as the intentions of the 
lord-lieutenant became publicly known the people 
arose, and by their determined resistance kept the 
imperial corruptionists at bay for more than a year. 



HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 93 

Cornwallis's description of the men who were at 
that time foremost under English protection in ruin- 
ing Ireland is the best possible explanation of his 
final victory in buying them up and destroying the 
legislative body which was cursed by their presence. 
On July 8, 1798, he writes to the duke of Portland as 
follows, the letter being marked "private and con- 
fidential " (his allusion to the rebels needs no com- 
ment) : " The principal persons in this country and 
the members of both Houses of Parliament are in 
general averse to all acts of clemency, and although 
they do not express, and are perhaps too much heat- 
ed to see, the ultimate effect which their violence 
must produce, would pursue measures that could 
only terminate in the extirpation of the greater num- 
ber of the inhabitants and in the utter destruction of 
the country. The words ' papists ' and ' priests ' are 
for ever in their mouths, and by their unaccountable 
policy they would drive four-fifths of the community 
into irreconcilable rebellion. ... I should be very 
ungrateful if I did not acknowledge the obligations I 
owe to Lord Castlereagh, whose abilities, temper and 
judgment have been of the greatest use to me, and 
who has on every occasion shown his sincere and un- 
prejudiced attachment to the general interests of the 
British empire." At other times the noble lord wrote 
of Castlereagh, " He is so cold that nothing can warm 
him ;" but when he wished to give him a persuasive 
recommendation to the favor of the imperial govern- 
ment he pleaded that he knew no favors were for the 



94 HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 

Irish, but that an exception should be made in the 
case of Castlereagh : " he is so very unlike an Irish- 
man." When the news of the arch-traitor's suicide 
was spread it was another English lord (Byron) who 
wrote : 

" So he has cut his throat at last ! He ? who? 
The man who cut his country's long ago." 

In a letter to Pitt dated July 20, Cornwallis makes 
the first avowal of his chief business in Ireland. He 
informs the minister that he does not see at that mo- 
ment the most distant encouragement for the project. 
A few days later he tells Ross that there is no law in 
the country except martial law, and that numberless 
murders are committed by his people without any 
process or examination. His yeomanry, he adds, 
" are in the style of the loyalists of America, only 
more numerous and powerful and a thousand times 
more ferocious." Many letters are full of the loath- 
some details of betrayals of the rebels, of the sums 
paid informers, the artifices resorted to to obtain the 
secrets of suspects, and the rewards held out to the 
base and the infamous. In August, Cornwallis issued 
general orders appealing to the regimental officers to 
assist in putting a stop to the licentious conduct of 
the troops ; in September his thoughts revert to the 
Parliament. The Catholics who have kept out of it 
by the determination of His Majesty must be con- 
ciliated. Some advantages must be held out to them 
in the proposed union of the two countries — "the 



HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. Q$ 

union of the shark with its prey," as Lord Byron 
termed it. The lord-lieutenant has been talking with 
some of his official friends, and is beginning to think 
that they would not be averse to the union, provided 
it were a Protestant union ; but they would not hear 
of the Catholics sitting in the imperial Parliament. 
This bigotry does not please him, nor does he see in 
it the promise of success. He writes Ross that he is 
convinced that until the Catholics are admitted into 
a general participation of rights there will be no peace 
or safety in Ireland. A private and somewhat alarm- 
ing letter is despatched to the duke of Portland by 
hand. The progress of rebellion, the disaffection of 
the Catholics and the apparent resolution of the dis- 
contented to effect a general insurrection convince 
Cornwallis that if the union be not speedily accom- 
plished it will soon be too late to attempt it. In Oc- 
tober, Cornwallis writes Pitt : " It has always appear- 
ed to me a desperate measure for the British govern- 
ment to make an irrevocable alliance with a small 
party in Ireland (which party has derived all its con- 
sequence from, and is in fact entirely dependent upon, 
the British government) to wage eternal war against 
the papists and Presbyterians of this kingdom, which 
two sects, from the fairest calculations, compose about 
nine-tenths of the community." In the same letter 
he prophesies that if Catholic emancipation is not 
granted then, it will be extorted at a later time — a 
prophecy literally fulfilled and acknowledged by the 
duke of Wellington thirty years afterward. 



g6 HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 

All the transactions in progress at this time are 
either unknown to Cornwallis, or he leaves the men- 
tion of some of them to others, or his editor — care- 
ful of his reputation — omits them. In November the 
lord-lieutenant writes to Ross : " Things have gone 
too far to admit of a change, and the principal per- 
sons in this country have received assurances from 
the English ministers which cannot be retracted." 
No information of the nature of these assurances 
appears previously in the correspondence, but the 
evidence is accessible elsewhere. Pitt writes from 
Downing street to Cornwallis that the Speaker of 
the Irish House of Commons (John Foster) had 
been in London, and had conversed with him on the 
proposed union. Pitt believed he would not obstruct 
the measure, and if it could be made personally pal- 
atable to him he might give it fair support. The 
premier suggests that the prospect of an English 
peerage be held out to him, with some ostensible 
situation. Time proved the minister did the Speaker 
gross injustice; Foster had been cautious in talking 
with the minister, and the latter was so accustomed 
to thinking that every man had his price that he mis- 
construed Foster's wariness into the solicitation of a 
bribe. 

A week or two later Cornwallis, in a letter to Ross, 
expresses his frank opinion of the men in Ireland 
who were acting for the English government in car- 
rying on the project of the union : " They are de- 
tested by everybody but their immediate followers, 



HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 97 

and have no influence but what is founded on the 
grossest corruption." 

Yet the enterprise moved slowly and painfully. 
Castlereagh admits to a friend that " there is no pre- 
disposition in its favor," but, while the bar is almost 
a unit against it, the Orangemen are for it, believing 
that the Catholics will oppose it ; he hopes that the 
arrangement proposed for the Catholic clergy will 
secure their support. No arrangement, in fact, was 
ever made for them, but a few favored the measure ; 
among these was the archbishop of Dublin. Castle- 
reagh closes this letter with an important statement : 
"The principal provincial newspapers have been se- 
cured, and every attention will be paid to the press 
generally." November 27, Cornwallis writes a secret 
letter to the duke of Portland, describing minutely 
the steps he had felt it his " duty to make in conse- 
quence of Your Grace's despatch enclosing heads of 
a union between the two kingdoms ;" and the steps 
must have been humiliating enough to a man of 
Cornwallis's professed disgust for such atrocious 
business. He summarizes the results of his ap- 
proaching " the most leading characters " on the 
subject : Lord Shannon is favorable, but will not 
declare himself openly until he sees that his doing 
so " can answer some purpose ;" " Lord Ely (relying 
on the Crown in a matter personal to himself) is pre- 
pared to give it his utmost support ;" Lord Yelver- 
ton had no hesitation about it : he was made Vis- 
count Avonmore ; Lord Perry would not pledge 



9§ HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 

himself against it: he had a government pension 
of three thousand pounds a year. 

In December, Cornwallis writes to the duke of 
Portland that Speaker Foster and Sir John Parnell, 
chancellor of the exchequer — the great-grandfather 
of Charles Stewart Parnell — are still in London, and 
that he hopes they will not have left it before Castle- 
reagh shall arrive there : " Some of the king's Irish 
servants appear to be the most impracticable in their 
opinions, and I feel confident that Your Grace will 
leave no means untried to impress these gentlemen 
more favorably before their return to this kingdom." 
The plain hint was not lost — with what result, the 
final record will show. Lord Castlereagh bore a 
letter to Pitt in which Cornwallis declared : " That 
every man in this most corrupt country should 
consider the important question before us in no 
other point of view than as it may be likely to pro- 
mote his private objects of ambition or avarice will 
not surprise you " — an allegation true as to Pitt, who 
proceeded solely on that assumption, for he was not 
silly enough to believe that any man of sound sense 
in Ireland would be moved by other motives than 
avarice or ambition in betraying the right of his 
country to make her own laws under a British 
constitution guaranteeing her that right. But it 
was a careless exaggeration on the part of Corn- 
wallis : he approached men whom he could not cor- 
rupt. A great meeting of the bar held that month 
revealed the fact that only thirty-two were in favor 



HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 99 

of the measure, while five times as many opposed it ; 
and of those thirty-two, five only were left without 
government appointment. It is not unlikely that the 
five had been won by what Barrington calls "simple 
metallic corruption." Intimidation was tried with 
more or less success on those who were excep- 
tionally dangerous; in the beginning of the year 
1799 it was even proposed to disgown Saurin, one 
of the ablest Protestant lawyers. The threat was 
not carried out ; and after the union had been con- 
summated he accepted the office of attorney-general 
for Ireland, and prosecuted Sheil energetically for 
speeches not half so " treasonable " in behalf of 
Catholic emancipation as his own had been against 
the union. Plunkett, another of the patriots of the 
bar of 1799, accepted the office of solicitor-general 
soon after the passage of the act : it was he who 
prosecuted Robert Emmet. 

That " simple metallic corruption " was being car- 
ried boldly on there was no attempt to conceal in 
government circles. January 10, Castler.eagh ac- 
knowledges the receipt of five thousand pounds 
from the English secret-service fund, and adds : 
"Arrangements with a view to further communi- 
cations of the same nature will be highly advanta- 
geous, and the duke of Portland may depend on their 
being carefully applied." Cornwallis was busy try- 
ing to make converts among those then holding 
positions under the government. He writes to the 
duke of Portland that, finding Sir John Parnell de- 



100 HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 

termined not to support the union, " I have notified 
to him his dismission from the office of chancellor of 
the exchequer, and I shall pursue the same line of 
conduct without favor or partiality whenever I may- 
think it will tend to promote the success of the meas- 
ure." 

Cornwallis may have had occasion to deeply re- 
gret his failure to corrupt Parnell ; for after the first 
test vote in the Commons — which was a great sur- 
prise to the government — the lord-lieutenant writes 
to the duke of Portland : " I have now only to ex- 
press my sincere regret to Your Grace that the prej- 
udices prevailing amongst the members of the Com- 
mons, countenanced and encouraged as they have 
been by the Speaker and Sir John Parnell, are infi- 
nitely too strong to afford me any prospect of bring- 
ing this measure, with any chance of success, into 
discussion in the course of the present session." 

The test vote should not have so deeply discour- 
aged Cornwallis. It is thus analyzed by Barrington : 
The House was composed of three hundred, of whom 
eighty-four were absent. Of the two hundred and 
sixteen who voted, one hundred and eleven were 
against the government; and of the one hundred 
and five who voted with it, sixty-nine were holding 
government offices, nineteen were rewarded with 
office, one was openly bought during debate, and 
thirteen were created peers or their wives were made 
peeresses for their votes. Three were supposed to 
be uninfluenced. The absentees were presumably 



HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. IOI 

against the union ; were they for it, the government 
could have required their attendance. Castlereagh 
addressed himself assiduously to corrupting them 
during the recess ; and when the question came up 
again in the following year, forty-three of the eighty- 
four voted for the union. 

It is difficult to determine who were the more 
astonished at the result of the test vote, the govern- 
ment or the people; but the joy of the latter ex- 
ceeded the dismay of the former. The weak per- 
sonnel of the Parliament, the unblushing effrontery 
with which bribery had been carried on in and out 
of its halls, the pertinacity with which Castlereagh 
was known to continue his efforts in any given direc- 
tion, and the vast power of the British empire — which 
was understood to be at the service of the corrupters 
— had naturally driven the masses of the people into 
the conviction that the scheme must succeed. Its 
failure inspired the drooping country with wild en- 
thusiasm, which vented itself in all forms of popular 
demonstration. Grattan was unquestionably accu- 
rate when he said " that the whole unbribed intellect 
of Ireland " was opposed to the union. But the gov- 
ernment agents returned to their work resolved to 
accomplish after the recess what they had not won 
before it. They first secured the absentees ; they 
then elaborated a gigantic fraud on the Catholics by 
circulating the information that although, for obvious- 
ly politic reasons, no pledge would be publicly made 
to the clergy, the imperial government, after the pas- 



102 HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 

sage of the act, would provide for the payment of 
the Catholic priesthood on the same terms as those 
enjoyed by the clergy of the Established Church, 
and a like lure was cast about the dissenters. There 
is not the least doubt that Cornwallis honestly de- 
sired that this assurance should be in good faith, 
and there is ample testimony that he was authorized 
by Pitt and his associates to make it. But after the 
union was an accomplished fact the pledge was 
broken; the king positively affirmed that he had 
never been spoken to on the subject, and would 
never have consented to it had he been; and, in 
consequence of what Pitt affected to consider for a 
moment dishonor at the king's hands, he resigned, 
only to again accept office soon afterward. 

It is certain that Cornwallis was adroit enough to 
secure the support of a very large number of Cath- 
olics and the silence of the rest, and that the enter- 
prise was thus substantially forwarded. But he did 
not rely on promises from those who had no votes : 
he continued to buy those who had. A bill was au- 
daciously introduced by Castlereagh providing what 
he euphemistically termed " compensation " for those 
who would lose their seats by the Act of Union. His 
terms were generous enough : every aristocrat who 
returned members was to receive in cash fifteen thou- 
sand pounds for each member, every member who 
had purchased a seat should have his money re- 
funded from the Irish treasury, and every member 
who was in any manner a loser by the union should 



HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 105 

be amply repaid. The amount drawn from the people 
of Ireland in taxes for this shameless proceeding was 
fixed by the secretary at seven million five hundred 
thousand dollars. Thus did the English agent actually 
make the Irish people pay out of their own pockets 
the bribes by which their servants were induced to 
betray them to their enemies ! A parallel for this 
deed will be sought in vain in ancient or in modern 
history. 

The passage of the bill showed that the govern- 
ment had actually secured a majority, although a 
small one, and the patriots became disheartened. In 
their distress they appealed to the absent Grattan to 
return to the House and once again lift up the mighty 
voice which eighteen years before had won the in- 
dependence of the now-degenerate body. The reap- 
pearance of the venerable statesman on the floor of 
the House at the most critical juncture which had 
occurred since his withdrawal from politics furnishes 
an illustration of the manner in which " history " is 
made. 

First we have the intimation from Cornwallis (the 
date is January 15, 1800): "Grattan, I hear, is to be 
introduced after twelve to-night, until which period 
the debate is to be prolonged. I pity from my soul 
Lord Castlereagh, but he shall have something more 
than helpless pity from me. . . . Grattan has, you 
know, the confidence of forty thousand pikemen." 
The next day Cornwallis wrote to Portland that 
Grattan took his seat at seven in the morning, having 
7 



106 HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 

been elected for Wicklow at midnight : " He ap- 
peared weak in health, but had sufficient strength 
to deliver a very inflammatory speech of an hour 
and a half sitting." The biographer of the lord- 
lieutenant thus describes the scene : " The election 
had been timed by Mr. Grattan's friends so as to 
prevent his taking his seat until the unusual hour 
mentioned above, when he was supported in to the 
House apparently in a fainting state. . . . The scene 
was well gotten up, but the trick was too palpable 
and produced little effect." The truth was that Corn- 
wallis and Castlereagh, profoundly dreading the in- 
fluence of Grattan, had resorted to all possible de- 
vices to prevent his election, and the writ was with- 
held until the last moment the law allowed ; it was 
only by waking up the proper officer after midnight 
that the return was gotten to Parliament at seven in 
the morning. The allegation that Grattan's entrance 
at that time was a bit of theatricalism invented by 
him or by his friends is therefore a mere falsehood. 
Instead of appearing a " palpable trick," his arrival 
is pronounced by Barrington, who was present, 
" electric." Grattan, he says, was reduced almost 
to the appearance of a spectre. " As he feebly tot- 
tered into the House to his seat every member simul- 
taneously rose from his seat." Would they, corrupt 
and incorrupt, have so risen in homage to a " pal- 
pable trick " ? " He moved slowly to the table ; his 
languid countenance seemed to revive as he took 
those oaths that restored him to his pre-eminent 



HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. \OJ 

station ; the smile of inward satisfaction obviously 
illuminated his features, and reanimation and energy 
seemed to kindle by the labor of his mind." Almost 
breathless, amid the deep silence Grattan attempted 
to rise, but could not keep his feet. He was given 
permission to remain in his chair. " Then," says 
Lecky, "was witnessed that spectacle — among the 
grandest in the whole range of mental phenomena — 
of mind asserting its supremacy over matter. . . . As 
the fire of oratory kindled, as the angel of enthusiasm 
touched those pallid lips with the living coal, as the 
old scenes crowded on the speaker's mind and the 
old plaudits broke upon his ear, it seemed as though 
the force of disease was neutralized and the buoyancy 
of youth restored. His voice gained a deeper power, 
his action a more commanding energy, his eloquence 
an ever-increasing brilliancy. For more than two 
hours he poured forth a stream of epigram, of ar- 
gument, of appeal. He traversed almost the whole 
of that complex question ; he grappled with the 
various arguments of expediency the ministers had 
urged ; but he placed the issue on the highest 
grounds : ' The thing he proposes to buy is what 
cannot be sold — liberty.' " " Never," adds Barring- 
ton, " did a speech make a more affecting impres- 
sion; but it came too late." 

It was too late. Bribery had accomplished its 
undertaking ; and, lest the people should rise up on 
the purchased traitors and rend them, Cornwallis 
had prudently increased the military in the country 



108 HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. 

to one hundred and twenty thousand men. So con- 
vinced was he that the people might attempt to save 
by force what they had lost by fraud that in extremity 
he resolved to accept even Russian and Dutch sol- 
diers if no others could be had. On the test vote, 
February 6, 1800, the government had a majority 
of forty-three ; and thus the Parliament of Ireland 
was doomed, while the tramp of soldiery resounded 
through the streets of Dublin to warn the indignant 
that their cause was lost and to admonish the reck- 
less that their courage would not avail. It was thus 
that Cornwallis consolidated the British empire. 

" In the case of Ireland," writes the historian of 
Rationalism, "as truly as in the case of Poland, a na- 
tional constitution was destroyed by a foreign power 
contrary to the wishes of the people. In the one 
case the deed was a crime of violence ; in the other 
it was a crime of treacheiy and corruption. In 
both cases a legacy of enduring bitterness was the 
result." 

The remaining letters of Cornwallis touching on 
Irish affairs are appeals to the British ministers to 
fulfil his promises made to the traitors, to pay the 
price for which they had sold the constitutional lib- 
erty of their country ; and scattered at intervals be- 
tween his dignified and often piteous entreaties are 
coarse demands from his subalterns for money to re- 
imburse themselves or to deliver to the commoner 
creatures who preferred cash. Reviewing the obsti- 
nate refusal of the king to consent to religious equal- 



HOW THE PARLIAMENT WAS LOST. IO9 

ity in Ireland, which he had promised, and the unfaith- 
fulness of the ministers in dishonoring his pledges, 
he writes : " Ireland is again to become a millstone 
about the neck of Britain, and to be plunged into all 
its former horrors and miseries." 



CHAPTER V. 

A LETTERED NATION REDUCED BY FORCE 
AND LAW TO ILLITERACY. 

THE Irish immigrants in the United States are 
taunted by thoughtless Americans with the 
crime or the misfortune of ignorance. Why is Ire- 
land ignorant? Was she an unlettered country 
when invaded by England ? and has she been con- 
stantly resisting the efforts of the English govern- 
ment to educate her? 

The authentic history of Ireland begins, by the 
common consent of historians, in the fifth century. 1 
There is no dispute about the character, the mission 
or the principal acts of St. Patrick. It is conceded 
that before the close of that century a bishop's see 

1 " Whether the Irish had an alphabet or a literature of their own 
before the arrival of St. Patrick, in the fifth century, was for a long 
time a contested question. It is now, however, generally admitted 
that there is every reason to believe they had both. Dr. Todd, a 
writer exceedingly cautious in making any assertions or advancing 
any opinions without being prepared to corroborate them by sufficient 
proof, has endorsed this view in very explicit terms. . . . Dr. Todd 
also states that there is every reason to believe that . . . this ancient 
alphabet was superseded by the present Roman characters, introduced 
by (the saint)." — Dublin Review (1871) ; article, " The Brehon Law 
of Ireland." 
110 



A NATION MADE ILLITERATE, III 

existed at Clogher, that Armagh was the seat of a 
metropolitan, and that public schools and seminaries 
flourished. Irish learning and civilization have here 
their authentic beginning. The cathedral-school at 
Armagh rose rapidly in importance, and became the 
first university of Ireland. The number of students, 
both native and foreign, so increased that the univer- 
sity, as we may justly call it, was divided into three 
parts, one of which was devoted entirely to students 
of the Anglo-Saxon race. We need not stop to de- 
termine how many other establishments similar to 
those of Armagh were really founded in the lifetime 
of St. Patrick. The rapid extension of the monastic 
institute in Ireland, and the extraordinary ardor 
with which the Irish cenobites applied themselves to 
the cultivation of letters, remain undisputed facts. 

" Within a century after the death of St. Patrick," 
says Bishop Nicholson, " the Irish seminaries had so 
increased that most parts of Europe sent their chil- 
dren to be educated here, and drew thence their 
bishops and teachers." 1 In the eighth century grants 
were made by the kings for the extension of educa- 
tion ; in the ninth there were seven thousand stu- 
dents at the university of Armagh, " and the schools 
of Cashel, Dindaleathglass and Lismore vied with it 



1 Christian Schools and Scholars, pp. 62, 63. Mosheim's Eccle- 
siastical History, p. 279 : " Irishmen . . . cultivated and amassed 
learning beyond the other nations of Europe in those dark times." 

2 Christian Schools and Scholars, vol. i., p. 63. 



112 A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 

Montalembert says that Ireland was one of the 
principal centres of Christianity from the fifth to the 
eighth century, 1 " and not only of Christian holiness 
and virtue, but also of knowledge, literature and that 
intellectual civilization with which the new faith was 
about to endow Europe, then delivered from heathen- 
ism and the Roman empire." 2 "While the Gothic 
tempest 3 was trampling down the classic civilization, 
Ireland providentially became the nursery of saints 
and the refuge of science. Her two most ardent pas- 
sions then were to learn and to teach. In Iceland, 
the Orkneys, Scotland, Britain, Gaul, Germany, even 
in Italy, her missionaries were everywhere transplant- 
ing in the loosened soil the pagan tree of knowledge 
and the Christian tree of life. As the Goths con- 
quered Rome, the Celts conquered the Goths." 
" There were also trained an entire population [in a 
monastic city] of philosophers, of writers, of archi- 
tects, of carvers, of painters, of calligraphers, of mu- 
sicians, poets and historians, but, above all, of mis- 
sionaries and preachers destined to spread the light 
of the gospel and of Christian education not only in 
all the Celtic countries of which Ireland was the 
nursing-mother, but throughout Europe, among all 
the Teutonic races, among the Franks and Burgun- 

1 " From the sixth century the fame of the Irish schools stood high 
in Europe/' — Dublin Review (vol. xvi., 1871), "The Brehon Law 
of Ireland." 

2 Monks of the West, vol. iii., p. 84. 

3 Attempts to Establish the Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 
Thomas D'Arcy McGee, p. 22. 



A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 113 

dians, who were already masters of Gaul, as well 
as amid the dwellers of the Rhine and the Danube, 
and up to the frontiers of Italy." " This preponder- 
ance of the monastic element in the Irish Church 
. . . maintained itself not only during all the flourish- 
ing period of the Church's history, but even as long 
as the nation continued independent;" 1 and the 
Church preserved learning until learning and the 
Church and independence passed away together. 2 
" They survived internal feuds and the fierce inroads 
of the Danes ; the schools flourished even in the 
presence of famine, and one of the general rules was 
that students who came from abroad should be fed 
and lodged free. From Ireland as from a fountain- 
head contemporaneous nations ' drew those streams 
of learning which afterward so copiously overspread 
the Western world. ... It was thence that many 
foreign churches received their greatest ornaments. 
It was there our own Alfred received his education ; 3 
and at what time soever the Irish gained the know- 
ledge of letters, that period must have been an early 
one, and is justly set down as such by the writers of 
that country.' " 

Over to the court of Charlemagne went Clement 

1 Monks of the West, vol. iii., p. 87. 2 Ibid., p. 53. 

3 " In the latter end of the seventh century, Alfred, an Anglo- 
Saxon prince, son of Oswy, king of Northumbria, and who was 
himself afterward king of Northumbria, having been exiled from 
England, retired to Ireland, where he studied for many years in its 
seminaries." — Annals of the Four Masters, p. 441, note. "Alfred 
the Great also received his education there." — Ibid., p. 101, note. 



114 A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 

and Dungal; 1 in the court of Charles the Bald, John 
Scotus Erigena 2 taught science and philosophy; the 
life of the great saint of Iona, written by Adamnan 
in the seventh century, was carried to the principal 
churches of the Continent by many a saint and 
scholar who had seen the Book of Kells; 3 and the 
monks of St. Gall sang the psalms to music which 
they had learned from Irish choir-masters. The 
seed that Columba had planted in Scotland had 
ripened into many harvests, and Ireland supplied 
teachers to the Hebrides as well as to the Conti- 
nent, 4 and on the rocks of Iona as well as on the 

1 " Tiraboschi quotes an edict of the emperor Lothaire, published 
in 823, for the re-establishment of public schools in nine of the chief 
cities of Italy, from which it appears that Dungal was at the time 
still presiding over the school of Pavia. He seems to be the same 
who in 811 addressed a long letter to Charlemagne on the subject 
of two solar eclipses which were expected to take place in the fol- 
lowing year, and may be yet further identified with the ' Dungalus 
Scotorum prsecipuus ' who is noticed in the catalogue of the library 
of Bobbio, where he at last retired, bringing with him a great store 
of books which he presented to the monastery. Among them were 
four books of Virgil, two of Ovid, one of Lucretius, and a consider- 
able number of the Greek and Latin fathers." — Christian Schools 
and Scholars, vol. i., p. 196. 

2 Hallam says, " But two extraordinary men, Scotus Erigena and 
Gerbert, stand out from the crowd in literature and philosophy." — 
Literature of Europe, vol. i., p. 32. 

Interesting notes on this subject will be found in Very Rev. Bede 
Vaughan's Life of St. Thomas of Aquin. 

3 Written by St. Columba in the sixth century, and deposited in 
the church of Kells. It is now in Trinity College, Dublin. 

* " We again repeat what it required all the learning of Usher ; 
White, Colgan and Ward to prove — namely, that the holy and learn- 



A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 115 

Scottish Highlands lingered- for ages the hymns of 
the disciples of Columbkille. Wherever an Irish 
college was founded, on whatever soil it flourished, 
religion and learning were hand in hand, and to the 
labors of the student were joined those of the scribe 
and the artisan. Europe was enriched by man- 
uscripts made by Irish hands, " and the researches 
of modern bibliopolists are continually disinterring 
from German or Italian libraries a Horace or an 

ed Scotia of the ancients was Ireland. The name of Scotia became 
the exclusive possession of the Scotch — that is to say, of the Irish 
colonists in Caledonia — only in the eleventh or twelfth century, in 
the time of Giraldus Cambrensis, at the moment when the power of 
the true Scots declined in Scotland under the influence of the Anglo- 
Norman conquest." — Montalembert, Monks of the West, vol. iii., p. 
162, note. 

"Joannes Duns Scotus, a native of Down, and hence surnamed 
Dunnensis, signifying ' of Donn,' was born near Downpatrick in the 
latter end of the thirteenth century. . . . Being educated for some 
time in the schools of Ireland, he went to England and entered 
Merton College in Oxford ; he became a Franciscan friar, and was 
a lecturer at Oxford and afterward at Paris on theology, philosophy, 
etc., and from his great abilities and acuteness of intellect he was 
denominated The Subtle Doctor. In theology, metaphysics and 
philosophy he was scarcely equalled by any man in Europe, and his 
great rival as a theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, divided the literary 
and religious world into two great sects, the followers of the one 
being denominated Thotnists, and of the other Scotists. . . . And it 
may also be observed that Joannes Scotus Erigena, an Irishman and 
one of the most learned and celebrated men in Europe in the ninth 
century, and Marianus Scotus, as well as Duns Scotus, have been all 
absolutely claimed by . . . Scotch writers as natives of Scotland, for 
which they had no grounds but the surname Scotus ; but the Irish 
in ancient times . . . were called Scotii or Scots, and Ireland was 
named Scotia." — Annals of the Four Masters, p. 583, note. 



Il6 A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 

Ovid or a sacred codex whose Irish gloss betrays 
the hand which traced its delicate letters." l 

Music, poetry and art were assiduously cultivated 
in Ireland until the Danish invaders, by the sacking 
of Armagh, the destruction of nearly every mon- 
ument of art which fell in their way and the prohi- 
bition by them of letters, broke up the schools in 
the portions of the island they overran ; but with 
the victorious ascendency of Brian Boru 2 the schools 
were rebuilt and the arts again resumed their sway. 
So profoundly peaceful did Brian's kingdom become 
after his chastisement of the Danes that the poets, 
to illustrate the tranquillity, good order and chivalry 
of the time, devised the legend of a beautiful lady 
" in the richest attire, and with a quantity of gold 
and jewels about her, travelling over the kingdom 
without damage either to her honor or to her prop- 
erty." 3 Wherever the Irish bards went they carried 
their love for the national instrument, the harp, and 
their poetry was rhymed. 4 The historians of art 

1 Christian Schools and Scholars, vol. i., p. 75. 

2 " Besides repairing the schools burned by the Danes, and every- 
where giving orders for students to be sought out to fill them with, 
he likewise erected many new seminaries of education for the in- 
crease of science and useful knowledge in his country." — Winne, 
vol. i., p. 163. 

A chronological poem on the Christian kings of Ireland, written 
by the abbot Giolla Moduda in the twelfth century, is among the 
preserved Irish manuscripts. 

3 The origin of Moore's " Rich and rare were the gems she wore." 
* " Rhyme, if not invented in Ireland, was at least adopted by her 

versifiers so generally and at so early a period as sometimes to be 



A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. WJ 

declare that the Irish introduced Celtic art, which 
was a formidable competitor against that of Byzan- 
tium, and Irish illuminations furnished the schools 
of Europe with models. 

Was this civilization all gone when Strongbow 
landed? 1 Absurd supposition! "Whatever exag- 
geration may have been committed by the national 
annalists when they speak of the foreign students 
who resorted to the Irish schools, 2 it is impossible 
to doubt that they were eagerly sought by natives 
of the most distant lands, who, in an age when the 
rest of Europe was sunk in illiterate barbarism, 
found in the cloisters of Armagh, Lismore, Clonard 
and Clonmacnois masters of philosophy and science 
whose learning had passed into a proverb. Camden 
remarks how common a thing it is to read in the 
Lives of" our English saints that they were sent to 

designated ' the art of the Irish.' " — Christian Schools and Scholars, 
vol. i., p. 76. 

1 " But, as the ravages of the Danes seldom penetrated farther 
than the seacoast, many copies [of the Brehon Laws] were still pre- 
served, especially such as were in the custody of the Brehons them- 
selves. That office was hereditary in certain families, and with the 
office were transmitted from father to son the manuscript copies of 
the laws. . . . One of the fragments in the Trinity College man- 
uscripts (H. 3, 18) is undoubtedly upward of five hundred years 
old." — Dublin Review (1871); article, "The Brehon Law of Ire- 
land," p. 399. Mr. Gladstone in his Mansion-House speech, during 
his recent visit to Ireland, had the candor properly to acknowledge 
the debt of Europe to the Irish schools. 

2 The Irish professors went over to Oxford to teach after the 
invasion. 



Il8 A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 

study in Ireland, and the same expression occurs 
quite as frequently in the Gallican histories. Even 
in the eleventh century, Solgenus, bishop of St. Da- 
vid's, spent ten years studying in the Irish schools, 
which were then as famous as ever!' 1 As the early 
architecture of their native island is of itself an im- 
perishable monument of the civilization which con- 
fronted the Saxon invader only to be overthrown by 
him, so the churches and monasteries of mediaeval 
Europe, the seminaries and the universities refute 
the false assertion, industriously propagated and so 
commonly believed in our own day, that letters and 
civilization were carried over the Channel " on the 
long lances and mailed steeds " 2 of the soldiers of 
Henry II. 3 For two hundred years after the in- 
vasion the history of Ireland is the story of battles, 
pursuits and retreats, of which the sanguinary de- 
tails contain the names of the monasteries assaulted 
and robbed — and every monastery was a seminary — 
of churches pillaged; and nearly every church was 
the centre of a group of schools. The Annals of 
the Four Masters are studded during the twelfth, 
thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with a 
brilliant chronology of doctors, poets and philos- 
ophers, as with saints and martyrs, whose works, 

1 Christian Schools and Scholars, vol. i., p. 79. 

2 Abbe Perraud. p. iii. 

3 Hallam {Literature of Europe) grudgingly admits that "as early 
as the sixth century" there was learning in the Irish monasteries, 
and that Ireland " both drew students from the Continent and sent 
forth men of comparative eminence into its schools and churches." 



A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. II9 

being in their native tongue, are now popularly 
unknown. Instead of the Saxon invaders carrying 
letters and civilization to Ireland, they went to de- 
stroy both. 1 

Mr. George Sigerson, the distinguished essayist, 
says in his interesting Modern Ireland: 2 " Those who 
delight in expatiating on the irreconcilable race-antip- 
athies supposed to exist between the Anglo-Saxon 
and the Celt in these islands appear incapable of 
imagining a time when such feelings were unknown." 
But that time was prior to the invasion of Ireland for 
conquest and land-confiscation. " And yet it happens 
that when the people of England and Ireland were 

1 " With this antique guide in our hands (Senckus Mor, or Code 
of Brehon Laws) we cross the borders of the English Pale, with its 
belt of watch-towers garrisoned by wardens, who day and night 
scrutinize the woods spread before them, ready to flash a warning 
of the approach of the Irish enemy. Into the woods we enter as it 
were, and pass from them into the clearings where the dwellings of 
the chiefs are placed. And as we journey along, in place of the 
savage neglect we expected to find we observe a certain order and 
regularity. The roads and pathways are kept clean and free from 
brambles and brushwood, the streams are spanned with rustic bridges, 
and here and there the sound of a mill is heard. The land, too, is 
tilled, and where the countless cattle are browsing we hear the sound 
of bells tinkling from the necks of the foremost leaders of the herds 
and observe that the fields are irrigated. . . . Now, this is no ideal 
sketch. There is not a single feature of the landscape we have thus 
brought before us for which law and authority cannot be quoted 
from the Senckus Mor. . . . And the orchard and its beehives are 
all mentioned in its pages. Not only so, but distinct provisions are 
laid down for their protection and recovery of their estimated value." 
— Dublin Review ( 187 1) ; article, " The Brehon Law of Ireland." 

2 London : Longmans. 



120 A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 

more purely composed of these races than they are 
at present, no such antipathy was exhibited. This 
fact is apparent on a first glance at the relations 
which existed between these two nations in the 
matter of education. Venerable Bede says it was 
customary among the English, from the highest to 
the lowest, to retire to Ireland for study and devo- 
tion, and further adds that they were all hospitably 
received and supplied gratuitously with food, books 
and instruction." How marvellous the after-return ! 
They whom the Irish freely lodged, fed and taught 
robbed the Irish of house, land and education ! " Ad- 
helm, his contemporary, in a passage in which he 
shows his desire to exalt some of his own country- 
men, corroborates this statement. Why should Ire- 
land, he asks, whither troops of students are daily 
transported, boast of such unspeakable excellence, 
as if, in the rich soil of England, Greek and Roman 
masters were not to be found to unlock the treasures 
of divine knowledge ? ' Though Ireland, rich and 
blooming in scholars, is adorned, like the poles of 
the world, with innumerable bright stars, Britain has 
her radiant sun, her great pontiff Theodore.' Yet 
Adhelm himself admits that he received the greater 
part of his education at the hands of the Irish founder 
of that monastery of Malmsbury of which he was 
abbot. Camden also affirms that the migration of 
Anglo-Saxon students to Irish schools was the rule. 
' Our Anglo-Saxons,' he says, ' flocked in early times 
to Ireland as if to purchase goods. Hence it is fre- 



A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 1 23 

quently read in our historians on holy men, " He has 
been sent to Ireland to school." ' It cannot be doubt- 
ed that the prosperity of the Irish schools of learn- 
ing- was great, and that it was chiefly due to the high 
value set upon learning by the Irish people generally 
— an idea they have cherished under the most ad- 
verse circumstances of later times. . . . The system 
of education which preceded the more modern uni- 
versity system in Ireland took in the study of law, 
history, philosophy in a restricted sense, poetry, 
music and languages. . . . The successive waves 
of invasion which burst upon the Irish shore laid 
waste all the land they touched. Men could not be 
expected to devote themselves to questions of ab- 
stract importance, when they were annually called 
upon to defend their lives or protect their property 
from fierce irruptions. The Danish marauders, as 
they plundered and burned church, monastery and 
the habitations of chief and noble, appear to have 
taken a perverse pleasure in destroying every man- 
uscript on which they could lay hands. And when 
the Danes had been conquered, the Anglo-Norman 
invasion came to engage the inhabitants once more 
in a protracted struggle for life, land and native in- 
stitutions. Thus Ireland lost her prominent posi- 
tion in the ranks of learning at a time when it was 
most important for her future to retain and develop 
it." 

But learning and taste survived even the success- 
ful invasion. The small part of the island which the 



124 A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 

seekers for rich land succeeded in reducing by arms 
did not contain all the scholars or all the schools of 
Ireland. It remained for the makers of penal laws 
to crush all learning out of the country, and an ex- 
amination of the articles against education in that 
code will not only at once disclose the cruel and 
bitter methods employed to reduce a lettered nation 
to illiteracy, but will also make apparent how com- 
plete the destruction of education then became, and 
how sturdily even the poorest of the native popula- 
tion struggled for the smallest fragments of a once- 
glorious heritage. As the penal laws were directed 
against the Catholics of Ireland, it is judicious to 
take from a Protestant a description of their effects. 
It is needless to remind the reader that almost the 
whole Irish population was Catholic, as it yet is. 

Says Sigerson : " Over the heads of the bard, the 
schoolmaster and the priest hung the sharp sword 
of the penal laws. Religion forbade its ministers to 
abandon the land to its fate, and the old thirst for 
learning produced schoolmasters who might impart, 
against the law, some classical knowledge to those 
who desired to fill up the broken ranks of the minis- 
try. Thus there were schools held in caves " (it was 
a crime for a Catholic to teach or to learn, as will be 
seen by a perusal of Lecky's summary of the penal 
laws, given in another chapter), " in mountain-glens, 
behind hedges — whence the name ' hedge-school ' — 
where forbidden knowledge was imparted by an out- 
law master to illegal pupils, with a youthful sentry 



A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 1 25 

posted on some neighboring eminence to give warn- 
ing of the approach of the officers of the law." Thus 
did England endeavor to educate Ireland ! " But if 
it was penal to look for education at home, it was 
doubly penal to seek for it abroad, even in those col- 
leges which Irish officers serving in France and Spain 
had built out of their pay, and which they endowed with 
certain burses that might be obtained and held by any 
of their kinsfolk or of their native country." In the 
history of what other people will be found a parallel 
for this ? These soldiers were brave men who had 
been defeated in the field by superior English force, 
and who, rather than suffer the degradation which the 
conquerors inflicted, preferred exile and foreign mil- 
itary service. Realizing the depth of ignorance into 
which the penal laws against education in Ireland 
would consign the masses of their wretched country- 
men, they devoted to the foundation of these free 
colleges for Irish students the compensation allowed 
them in the armies in which they enlisted. But the 
English penal laws pursued them even into exile. It 
was a criminal offence for a Catholic father to send 
his child out of Ireland to school, and there were no 
schools left for him in Ireland. A few Catholic fam- 
ilies who, for some exceptional reason, had money 
enough to allow the son the advantages to be obtained 
in these foreign colleges, and who wereable to risk 
the consequences of defying the law, sent their sons 
abroad ; and down to O'Connell's days it was still the 
practice : he studied at Douay. 



126 A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 

There is to-day one institution of learning in Ire- 
land, Trinity College, Dublin. It is a Protestant in- 
stitution, and up to recent times Catholics were not 
admitted into it. It has a curious history. Says 
Sigerson : " The monastery of All-Hallows was dis- 
solved — it enclosed a Catholic seminary — and its 
confiscated grounds given in 1 591 to be the site of 
a Protestant educational institute known as Trinity 
College." That was nearly three hundred years ago. 
Then all education was absolutely prohibited to the 
people of Ireland — absolutely, because only Protest- 
ants could go to school, and there were scarcely 
any Protestants in the country. How long did the 
laws then enacted remain in force ? When did Eng- 
land give the masses of the Irish people the privilege 
of going to school again ? Fifty years ago ! 

Can Americans now understand why the Irish im- 
migrant is illiterate ? .It will not be fair to say that 
if the privilege of learning has existed for fifty years, 
this generation of Irish should be educated. Some- 
thing more is required to make a people educated 
than the leave to go to school. Schools are neces- 
sary : we shall shortly see how they were provided. 
Schools are not enough, however numerous : the 
parent must be so situated that he can spare the 
time of the child, buy it books and clothe it present- 
ably. The landlords of Ireland extorted such enor- 
mous rent from the tenantry — who are, broadly 
speaking, all the people of Ireland — that the labor 
of the children was needed on the farms ; and if that 



A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 12J 

were not needed, the parents were usually without 
the means with which to equip them for the school- 
room. Will any but the thoughtless taunt the Irish 
immigrant with his want of education, with his 
poverty ? 

While it is true that the penal laws by which the 
Irish people were robbed of their schools and com- 
pelled to become illiterate were ostensibly direct- 
ed against the Catholic religion, it is equally true 
that the Catholic sovereigns of England were as 
vicious toward their Irish subjects as were the Prot- 
estant monarchs in whose reigns the penal laws were 
passed. It was essential that the masses of the peo- 
ple should be kept ignorant in order to complete the 
confiscation of their land, to establish absentee pro- 
prietary, and to prevent the rise in Ireland of the 
industries which intelligence and liberty would de- 
velop. 

Yet some learning, some hope of freedom to ac- 
quire learning, lingered among the people, and the 
traditions of the culture of former days, however 
rude and meagre their form, were fondly handed 
down. " By the fireside on a winter night," writes 
Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, " at fairs and markets, the 
old legends and traditions were a favorite recreation. 
The wandering harpers and pipers kept them alive ; 
the itinerant schoolmaster taught them with more 
unction than the rudiments. Nurses and seam- 
stresses, the tailor who carried his lapboard and 
shears from house to house and from district to 



128 A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 

district, the peddler who came from the capital 
with shawls and ribbons, the tinker who paid for 
his supper and shelter with a song or a story, 
were always ready with tales of the wars and the 
persecutions. A recent historian (Froude) cannot 
repress his disdain that in these times — for this 
was the Augustan age of Queen Anne — no great 
drama or epic poem or masterpiece of art was 
produced in Ireland; but it is not on the gaolers 
in this penal settlement, but their prisoners, that 
the critic's reproaches fall." 

What improvement had been made in the begin- 
ning of the present boastful century ? For the still 
insignificant Protestant minority education was free, 
abundant and attractive. There was the great Uni- 
versity of Dublin, with its professorships, its scholar- 
ships, its patronage and its honors : no Catholic 
could enter it. For the masses of the people there 
were still only the illegal hedge-schools ; and it is 
an imperishable proof of the love the Irish people 
had for knowledge that these open-air schools — as 
certain to be suppressed, if discovered by the police, 
as are the Land-League meetings in Ireland to-day 
— graduated scholars whose attainments were far 
from contemptible, and whose stores of learning 
were generously poured out to all with whom they 
came in contact. 

The burdens which the landlords imposed upon 
the people were heavy enough, but they had also to 
support a State-Church which they did not attend. 



A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 1 29 

The clergy of that Church maintained themselves in 
a princely manner at the expense of those who lived 
in squalor and who believed none of their doctrines. 
Nor, indeed, were these doctrines obtrusively preach- 
ed, for in many of the parishes there was no congre- 
gation. The ministers had to be supported by those 
who were not of their religion, and the tithes were 
as odious as they were oppressive. 
I In 1832 four-fifths of the population of Ireland 
could neither read nor write. English law had re- 
duced a nation to illiteracy. 

It would be rash for the fair-minded American to 
assume that, having given the masses of the people 
of Ireland liberty of conscience in 1829, free schools 
sustained by Irish taxes in 1832, and abolished the 
State-Church in 1870, the conscience and the intel- 
lect of the masses of the Irish people are now alike 
free. There is to-day a Catholic university in Ire- 
land, founded by voluntary contributions, but the 
English government does not permit it to confer de- 
grees. At the same time, the University of Dublin 
is essentially Protestant ; the astounding fact stands 
forth that in the last quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
tury a Catholic cannot obtain a university degree in 
a country of which four-fifths of the taxpayers who 
sustain the schools are Catholics ! 

To best extinguish as rapidly as possible the ab- 
stract idea of nationality in Ireland, the use of the 
native language was made penal ; but so tenacious 
were the people of the tongue in which their fathers 



I30 A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 

composed a noble literature that to fifteen per cent 
of them Gaelic is still a living speech. The deter- 
mination of the English government to extinguish 
the idea of nationality shows itself even now more 
conspicuously in the national schools. No history 
of Ireland is permitted to be studied in them. 

In spite of the extreme poverty of the country, 
and by sacrifices which must be heroic, the people 
are acquiring education by using such advantages as 
they are allowed : there are to-day more than a mil- 
lion children in the schools, national and denomina- 
tional ; and the tragic and exasperating story of their 
country's wrongs is fearfully pored over at the hum- 
blest firesides, although it is excluded from the 
schools. The idea of distinct nationality cannot be 
extinguished ; and the method now resorted to to 
keep it out of the consciousness of the intelligent 
Irish youth only inspires them with a more deter- 
mined love of it. If they cannot read the Gaelic of 
the bards, they can read the English of Thomas 
Davis. 

The eminent English critic — a Protestant of the 
Protestants — Mathew Arnold thus characterizes the 
refusal of the English Parliament to allow the major- 
ity of the people of Ireland the same rights in higher 
education which are enjoyed in other parts of the 
British empire and in every other civilized country : 

" All that by our genial policy we seem to have 
succeeded in inspiring in the Irish themselves is an 
aversion to us so violent that for England to incline 



A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 131 

one way is a sufficient reason to make Ireland incline 
another, and the obstruction offered by the Irish 
members in Parliament is really an expression, above 
all, of this uncontrollable antipathy. Nothing is more 
honorable to French civilization than its success in 
attaching strongly to France — France Catholic and 
Celtic — the German and Protestant Alsace. What a 
contrast to the humiliating failure of British civiliza- 
tion to attach to Germanic and Protestant Great 
Britain the Celtic and Catholic Ireland ! 

" For my part, I have never affected to be either 
surprised or indignant at the antipathy of the Irish 
to us. What they have had to suffer from us in past 
times all the world knows, and now, when we profess 
to practise ' a great and genial policy of conciliation ' 
toward them, they are really governed by us in def- 
erence to the opinion and sentiment of the British 
middle class, and of the strongest part of this class — 
the Puritan community. I have pointed out this be- 
fore, but in a book about schools, and which only 
those who are concerned with schools are likely to 
have read. Let me be suffered, therefore, to repeat 
it here. The opinion and sentiment of our middle 
class controls the policy of our statesmen toward 
Ireland. That policy does not represent the real 
mind of our leading statesmen, but the mind of the 
British middle class controlling the action of states- 
men. The ability of our popular journalists and suc- 
cessful statesmen goes to putting the best color they 
can upon the action so controlled, but a disinterested 



132 A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 

observer will see an action so controlled to be what 
it is, and will call it what it is. The great failure in 
our actual national life is the imperfect civilization 
of our middle class. The great need of our time is 
the transformation of the British Puritan. Our Pu- 
ritan middle class presents a defective type of relig- 
ion, a narrow range of intellect and knowledge, a 
stunted sense of beauty, a low standard of manner. 
And yet it is in deference to the opinion and senti- 
ment of such a class that we shape our policy toward 
Ireland. And we wonder at Ireland's antipathy to 
us ! Nay, we expect Ireland to lend herself to the 
make-believe of our own journalists and statesmen, 
and to call our policy ' genial ' ! 

" The Irish Catholics, who are the immense major- 
ity in Ireland, want a Catholic university. Elsewhere 
both Catholics and Protestants have universities where 
their sons may be taught by persons of their own 
form of religion. Catholic France allowed the Prot- 
estants of Alsace to have the Protestant university 
of Strasburg ; Protestant Prussia allows the Catholics 
of the Rhine province to have the Catholic university 
of Bonn ; the Protestants of Ireland have in Trinity 
College, Dublin, a university where the teachers in 
all those great matters which afford debatable ground 
between Catholics and Protestant are Protestant ; the 
Protestants of Scotland have universities of a like 
character ; in England the members of the English 
Church have in Oxford and Cambridge universities 
where the teachers are almost wholly Anglican. 



A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 1 33 

Well, the Irish Catholics asked to be allowed the 
same thing. 

" There is extraordinary difficulty in getting this 
demand of theirs directly and frankly met. They 
are told that they want secondary schools even 
more than a university. That may be very true, 
but they do also want a university ; and to ask for 
one institution is a simpler affair than to ask for a 
great many. They are told they have the queen's 
colleges, invented expressly for Ireland. But they 
do not want colleges invented expressly for Ireland : 
they want colleges such as those the English and 
Scotch have in Scotland and England. They are 
told that they may have a university of the London 
type, an examining board, and perhaps a system of 
prizes. But all the world is not, like Mr. Lowe, 
enamored of examining boards and prizes. The 
world in general much prefers to universities of the 
London type universities of the type of Strasburg, 
Bonn, Oxford ; and the Irish are of the same mind 
as the world in general. They are told that Mr. 
Gladstone's government offered them a university 
without theology, philosophy or history, and that 
they refused it. But the world in general does not 
desire universities with theology, philosophy and 
history left out; no more did Ireland. They are 
told that Trinity College, Dublin, is now an unsec- 
tarian university, no more Protestant than Catholic, 
and that they may use Trinity College. But the 
teaching in Trinity College is, and long will be (and 



134 A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 

very naturally), for the most part in the hands of 
Protestants; the whole character, tradition and atmo- 
sphere of the place are Protestant. The Irish Cath- 
olics want to have on their side, too, a place where 
the university teaching is in the hands of Catholics, 
and of which the character and atmosphere shall be 
Catholic. But then they are asked whether they 
propose to do away with all the manifold and deep- 
rooted results of Protestant ascendency in Ireland, 
and they are warned that this would be a hard — nay, 
an impossible — matter. But they are not proposing 
anything so enormous and chimerical as to do away 
with all the results of Protestant ascendency ; they 
propose merely to put an end to one particular and 
very cruel result of it — the result that they, the im- 
mense majority of the Irish people, have no univer- 
sity, while the Protestants of Ireland, the small mi- 
nority, have one. For this plain hardship they pro- 
pose a plain remedy, and to their proposal they want 
a plain and straightforward answer. 

" And at last they get it. It is the papal answer, 
Non possumus. The English ministry and Parlia- 
ment may wish to give them what they demand, 
may think this claim just, but they cannot give it 
them. In the mind and temper of the English peo- 
ple there is an unconquerable obstacle. ' The claims 
of the Irish Roman Catholics,' says the Times, ' are 
inconsistent with the practical conditions of politics. 
It is necessary to repeat the simple fact that the 
temper of the people of Great Britain will not ad- 



A NATION MADE ILLITERATE. 1 35 

mit of any endowment of Catholic institutions. We 
should recognize the futility of contending against 
the most rooted of popular prejudices.' 'The de- 
mand for the state endowment of a Catholic univer- 
sity or of a Catholic college,' says the Saturday Re- 
viezv, 'may be perfectly just, but at the same time 
perfectly impracticable. The determination not to 
grant it may be quite illogical, but it is very firmly 
rooted.' " 



CHAPTER VI. 
THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 

ENGLISH armies and English penal laws suc- 
ceeded in establishing foreign landlordism in 
Ireland : the heirs of the rightful owners are now the 
tenants of the heirs of those to whom the confiscated 
lands were given. John Bright fixes the number of 1 
these landlords at six thousand; Michael Davitt, 
who has studied the question still more closely, says 
the number is more nearly three thousand. These 
three thousand have an entire nation for tenants. 
Seventy-five per cent, of these tenants were practically, 
down to the passage of the Land Act of 1881, tenants- 
at-will. They could be expelled from their holding 
at the caprice of the landlord whether they paid their 
rent or not. Expulsion was for most of them a sen- 
tence of death. 

The rent extorted was always so high that the 
tenant, even in the best seasons, could barely live ; 
to save a shilling from year to year was impossi- 
ble. If the harvest was good, he sold his crops to 
pay his rent ; on a portion of the farm he raised po- 
tatoes to feed his family, the labor of all of whom, 

136 



THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 1 37 

young and old, of both sexes, was required on the 
farm. If the potato crop failed, the family was in 
danger of starvation, because the money obtained for 
the crops had to go to the landlord and there was 
nothing left with which to buy food. If the harvest 
was bad for all the crops — and bad harvests are not 
uncommon — the rent could not be paid ; the tenant 
was then evicted, and, having neither home nor 
money, he and his family perished by the roadside. 
The rents of Ireland have oftener caused famine 
than have bad harvests. Did Americans fail to ob- 
serve, when collections were being taken up in all 
parts of the United States, two years ago, for the 
famine-stricken people of Ireland, that it was dis- 
tinctly stated by all the relief committees that money, 
not food, was wanted? There was no scarcity of 
food in Ireland. The famine was not a natural but 
an artificial one. The food was the property of the 
landlords, to whom the tenants had to give it for 
rent; it was necessary that money should be sent 
from America to buy it for the tenants from the land- 
lords. It was only the potato crop that had failed ; 
all the other fruits of the soil in Ireland are the prop- 
erty of the landlords : they are the equivalent of rent. 
Food was being exported from Ireland, while money 
was being sent there in hundreds of thousands of dol- 
lars to save the tillers and the rightful owners of its 
soil from death by famine. The same extraordinary 
phenomenon was presented in the more awful famine 
season of 1847, when millions perished of hunger 



I38 THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 

and by fever. Corn was exported that year from the 
Irish ports to English consignees to be sold in Liv- 
erpool to pay Irish rents to absentee landlords. 

Sometimes the famines have been natural, the entire 
harvests being bad; but the rule in Ireland is that 
famines there are artificial. They are the result of 
exorbitant rents ; they are made, not by God, but by 
landlords. No land law that does not make the 
landlord share with the tenant the misfortunes of a 
bad harvest will be either an act of justice or an act 
of peace for that country. 

The condition to which excessive rents and the 
possibility of eviction have reduced Irish tenants 
is unparalleled in any other country, in any other 
age. When evicted they " will cower, often for days 
and weeks together," says the English economist 
Professor Cairnes, " in ditches by the roadside, de- 
pendent for their support on casual charity." When 
permitted to remain on their little farms, what is their 
condition ? One of abject poverty. Its depth is in- 
dicated by their food, their clothing and their shelter. 

Their food is the potato. 

Their clothing is the most meagre covering of 
nakedness. They rarely have hats or shoes, or a 
second garment of any kind. 

Their shelter? Mud cabins without the simplest 
conveniences of civilization. 

In the latest census the Irish dwellings are divided 
into four classes. The first are comfortable and sub- 
stantial ; the second are houses of from five to nine 




r 
I 



' '.{' 




'. "Ill 



THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. I4I 

rooms, on farms or in towns ; the third and fourth 
are mud houses ; the fourth are mud houses of only- 
one room, generally without window or chimney. 
Of the third and fourth classes there are five hundred 
and twelve thousand eight hundred and one. Esti- 
mating five persons to a family — which is a small 
estimate for Ireland — there are two and a half mil- 
lion persons living in mud houses, and more than 
half of them in mud hovels of one room. 

To these wretched people the land of Ireland be- 
longs by natural law — law which no economist has 
assailed, law which English economists have been 
the most emphatic in asserting. 

" The land of any country is the property of the 
nation occupying that country," says Froude. " The 
great evil of Ireland," said John Bright, " is this — 
that the Irish people, the Irish nation, are dispos- 
sessed from the soil." " The surplus profit is what 
the farmer can afford to pay as rent to the landlord," 
says John Stuart Mill. " Rent is surplus profit," 
says Bonamy Price. Speaking of those who affirm- 
ed that economic laws do not apply to Ireland on 
account of her unfortunate situation, Professor Cairnes 
says : " In my opinion, it is a radically false and prac- 
tically a most mischievous view — one against which, 
alike'in the interest of the peace of Ireland and for 
the credit of economic science, I am anxious with 
all my energy to protest." Again he says : " I have 
already stated what I conceive to be the economic 
basis of property — the right of the producer to the 



142 THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 

thing he has produced. ... I will suppose a farm 
which owes nothing of any kind to the landlord's 
outlay, on which the whole capital, fixed and circu- 
lating, in buildings, fences, manure and wages, has 
been advanced by the cultivator, and I will suppose 
that the soil of the farm is the worst possible qual- 
ity compatible with profitable cultivation. These 
conditions being supposed, how much of the wealth 
produced from the farm represents the due reward 
of the cultivator's exertions ? I answer, The whole." 

Let us see how this principle has been applied in 
the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland under 
the laws which began in the confiscations, were con- 
firmed by the penal statutes and have been enforced 
by the armies of England in Ireland. 

Professor Cairnes thinks his imaginary case ex- 
treme, but not absolutely impossible ; and he mod- 
ifies his conclusion as to the right of a farmer to all 
he produces if the landlord had furnished any por- 
tion of the capital expended on the farm. But in 
Ireland there are tens of thousands of farms on 
which the landlord never expended a penny of cap- 
ital, and in that country the imaginary case, instead 
of being extreme, is common. But with what re- 
sults ? The landlord rented the land to the tenant ; 
perhaps there was no cottage or even mud caBin on 
it. The landlord would neither build a dwelling nor 
loan the tenant the money to build it; the tenant 
built some sort of shelter. Was it then the property 
oi the tenant ? No ; it belongs to the landlord. Per- 



THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 1 43 

haps there was not a fence on the land ; the tenant 
built the fences. Did the landlord not allow him 
the outlay in a rebate of rent ? No ; the fences have 
become the property of the landlord. Perhaps the 
land was wholly without drainage ; the tenant drain- 
ed it. Surely the landlord compensated him for his 
time and labor ? No ; the drainage now is part of 
the landlord's estate. Possibly the soil was not in a 
favorable condition for the crops ; the tenant must 
first nurse it and feed it and coax it. Did he receive 
no compensation ? Under the law he was entitled 
to none. Said Lord Sherbrooke : " The Irish tenant 
knows perfectly well that he has no claim in equity 
or otherwise to payment for the cabin he may build, 
the bog he may drain or the stones he may roll 
away." * And after he had built the cabin or the 
cottage, and drained the bogs, and put up the fences, 
and wheedled or enticed the mountain-side into geni- 
ality, the landlord could step in and say : " When I 
rented you this farm it was worth only ten pounds a 
year. It was not drained ; it was not fenced ; it need- 
ed manure and labor before seeding ; there was no 
dwelling on it. Now all these things are accom- 
plished ; therefore the farm is worth a higher rent. 
You must now pay twenty pounds a year." 

" But I cannot," plead the tenant. 

"Then go," said the landlord. "Go," said the 
law. 

1 " Legislation for Ireland," The Nineteenth Century, November, 
1880. 



144 THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 

"Will you allow me nothing for the permanent 
improvements I have made ?" begged the tenant. 

" Not a farthing," said the landlord. " Not a far- 
thing," said the law. 

How long would the American people submit to 
such a law ? 

Occasionally there was a landlord who recognized 
the right of the tenant to compensation for labor 
which permanently raised the value of the land. 
But every such landlord has been better than the 
law. There are not many of them. Lord Sher- 
brooke is anxious that the world shall not misjudge 
the landlords. He is willing that legislation should 
do something for the tenant, but the landlords must 
not be required to pay the tenants for improvements. 
In refusing to do so they acted strictly in accord- 
ance with the law. 

" If a man," inquires Lord Sherbrooke, " is not 
safe in directing his course by the law of the land, 
where is he to look for safety ?" 

" There are no bounds to the tenant's liabilities," 
says Mr. Thornton, 1 "and no security against his 
ejection." 

It is desirable that Americans should understand 
precisely what the law has been for the tenure of 
land in Ireland, and here it is, stated by a distin- 
guished and experienced gentleman, better known 
in this country as Mr. Robert Lowe. 

The law of land tenure, then, was in brief this : 

1 A Plea for Peasant Proprietors, p. 190. 



THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 1 45 

The labor of the tenant was perpetually confis- 
cated. 

When his industry turned his labor into capital in 
the form of permanent improvements on his holding, 
his capital was confiscated. What money capital he 
used in improving the holding was confiscated. 

Thrift would have inspired him to improve the 
farm, but the fruits of his thrift would have been 
confiscated. 

The improvement of the holding would give su- 
perior crops ; he would have more money when the 
rent was paid ; he could send his children to school. 
No ; the improvement of the farm would have brought 
with more absolute certainty an increase in the rent. 
When the increased rent had been paid, there would 
be less money left to send the children to school or 
to buy physical necessaries. 

" The improvement in the condition of the tenant 
cannot be brought about," insists a political econ- 
omist, " except by the improvement of his farm." 
That is true everywhere but in Ireland. There the 
improvement of the farm made the condition of the 
tenant worse. His labor was confiscated; his money 
was confiscated ; his thrift was punished ; his indus- 
try was turned into misfortune. If he improved his 
farm, his rent was raised or he was turned off it 
without the means of procuring shelter. The rent 
was kept up to the highest competition rates in all 
seasons. He could not, in good season or in bad, 
however great his energy or complete his self-sacri- 



I46 THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 

fice, save enough to give his children a chance to 
rise above the squalor in which they were born. 

It was the interest of the tenant, therefore, not to 
be thrifty ; it was his interest not to be industrious ; 
it was his interest not to make any effort to better 
himself; it was his interest to keep his children in 
squalor; it was his interest to be as wretched as 
possible. 

A law which makes these things the interest of 
human beings is a law against nature. Blackstone, 
a most fervent Englishman, who glories, pardonably, 
in her laws and the greatness which they have pro- 
duced, and which in turn has produced them, says 
that laws against nature have no validity. Froude, 
an Englishman who loves his own land as intensely 
as"^e hates its victim-sister, says : " Land is not, and 
cannot be, property in the sense in which movable 
things are property. Every human being born into 
this planet must live upon the land if he lives at all. 
The land in any country is really the property of 
the nation which occupies it;" which is true in 
every country but Ireland. 

There has hitherto been slight difference in the 
land laws of England and Ireland, and that difference, 
strange to say, was in favor of Ireland. England has 
never had the advantages ©f the encumbered estates 
court or of its twin-tribunal the landed estates court. 
We shall reach these in time. But how vastly in 
favor of the English tenant is the operation of the 
land laws ! In England the landlord makes all the 



THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 1 47 

improvements. The tenant, generally speaking, has 
fixity of tenure — so long, at least, as he pays his rent. 
Not being compelled to make the improvements, or 
being equitably compensated for such as he does 
make which increase the permanent value of the 
farm, his labor is rewarded and he is able to save 
money. If the lord should be pleased to turn his 
farm into park or put it to manufacturing purposes, 
the departing tenant cannot complain for the same 
reason that exists to the ruin of his Irish brother. 
His labor has not been confiscated; his capital has 
not been stolen ; his industry has not been punished ; 
his thrift has not been turned into calamity. In his 
interesting, if not profound, England, her People, Pol- 
ity and Pursuits, Mr. T. H. S. Escott gives an impos- 
ing picture of the " Great Landlords and Estate Man- 
agement." It is altogether too flattering toward them, 
for the English tenant-farmer has something to say . 
to his countrymen when he shall have obtained ad- 
equate representation in Parliament. But it is at least 
true that the land laws are as leniently administered 
in England as such laws are likely ever to be. The 
duke of Devonshire, for instance, makes all the im- 
provements on the farms he rents. Agreements are 
annual between the duke and his tenants, but there 
is a revaluation only every twenty-one years. " This 
arrangement," says Mr. Escott, " comes to very much 
the same thing as a lease for that term. The tenants 
know very well that so long as they do their duty 
by the land they will not receive notice to quit; and 



I48 THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 

here, as elsewhere, the archives of the estate show 
many cases in which farms have been in possession 
of the same families, from father to son, for many 
generations, and not unfrequently for two or three 
centuries." 1 " There are estates " in Ireland " where 
a notice to quit," says Mr. Samuelson, " is printed on 
the back of each half-year's receipt for rent ; so that 
the tenants are under perpetual notice." 2 " When the 
revaluation is made," Mr. Escott goes on, " a full 
report of the condition of all the farms and other 
portions of the property is drawn up. Anything that 
can throw light on the management of a particular 
holding and the qualities displayed by a particular 
tenant are duly noted down*, as also are the improve- 
ments which it may be considered desirable to insti- 
tute or which the tenant himself may have suggested 
as necessary. It is then for the duke and his agents 
to consider whether the property shall remain in the 
same hands and what repairs shall be effected. In 
consideration of such repairs as may finally be carried 
out, either a permanent addition is made to the rent 
or else the tenant is charged a percentage on the 
money expended." " Improvements in the way of 
drainage," Mr. Escott says, describing the tenancies 
of Westminster, Northumberland, Cleveland and 
Devonshire estates, "improvements in the way of 
drainage, buildings, roads and fences, are either done 

1 England, p. 38. 

2 Studies of the Land and Tenantry of Ireland, by B. Samuelson, 
M. P., p. 13. 



THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 1 49 

at the expense of the landlord, or, if the tenant im- 
mediately defrays their cost, he receives compensa- 
tion from the landlord." x Mr. Samuelson says of 
the Irish tenant that, except on the estates of some 
large proprietors, the tenants have made every im- 
provement. They " have erected the house and 
steadings, have built every fence, have drained the 
farm more or less perfectly, in many cases have 
reclaimed it from the mountain or bog." Yet the 
rule has been that the landlord allowed the tenant 
nothing for all this even on eviction. " As far as the 
law is concerned," it is " entirely at the option of the 
landlord " to " make an allowance to the tenant for 
any or all these improvements or let him dispose of 
them to his successor, or whether he will confiscate 
them as his own property." 

It would be easy to multiply authorities on the 
different operation of the laws regulating land in the 
two countries, but these two Englishmen have stated 
it with sufficient distinctness. In England there is 
practically security of tenure ; in Ireland there has 
been practically perpetual notice to quit. In England 
the tenant receives compensation for improvements 
or the landlord makes them at his own expense ; in 
Ireland the tenant made all the improvements and 
the landlord confiscated them. In England the rent 
is not raised, generally speaking, except every twenty- 
one years, and then after a fair revaluation ; in Ireland, 
generally speaking, the rent has been raised when- 

1 England, p. 40. 



150 THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 

ever the landlord's agent thought he could extort 
another shilling out of the tenant. In England cap-i 
ital is permanently united with the land ; in Ireland 
capital has been permanently divorced from the land. 
In England, if the tenant must give up his holding, 
there are all the vast industries of his country for 
him to seek employment in ; in Ireland there is only 
one industry, the land. The tenant turned out of his 
holding, moneyless, without skill for any other call- 
ing, can find no other employment : he must starve, 
or commit crime and go to jail, or emigrate. 

Another feature exclusively peculiar to the con- 
dition of the Irish tenant is that in many cases he 
does not even know who his landlord is ; in still 
more he knows who he is, but never sees him, and 
any appeal which he might wish to make for justice 
or for humanity has to be made to an agent whose 
selfish interest requires that he shall extort the 
highest possible rent from the tenant. Absenteeism 
is an old evil in Ireland, and was one of the inevita- 
ble consequences of the confiscations, as has been 
already sufficiently shown. The Irish Parliament 
undertook to remedy it a hundred and fifty years 
ago. Taxation was tried ; confiscation of a portion 
of the absentee's estate was decreed. Swift exposed 
all its hideous features. The free — and the last — Irish 
Parliament endeavored to grapple with it, but the 
class at whom the proposed act was levelled had 
retainers enough to protect their interests. The 
abolition of the Parliament and the transfer of the 



THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 151 

seat of legislation for Ireland to the English capital 
aggravated absenteeism by increasing the induce- 
ments to live out of Ireland. One who has no 
sympathy with the movement now going on there 
writes : " This is not a matter upon which one is 
left to speculate, for there is visible proof of the 
results of the two systems — the system of residence 
and the system of absenteeism. Those parts of 
Ireland which are to-day best disposed to the Eng- 
lish government, which are freest from political 
agitation, which are the most peaceful and law- 
abiding, and in which the people are most generally 
enlightened, liberal and tolerant, are just those places 
where the land-owners have been longest and most 
constantly resident, and have for generations faith- 
fully performed the duties of their position ; those 
parts of Ireland where the people are most lawless, 
most ignorant, most superstitious, poor and back- 
ward, are the places where absenteeism has thrown 
its blighting influence, and where the people have 
been left to themselves. Had absentees but done 
their duty, the result for many past years and in the 
present day would have been far different. Unfor- 
tunately, as it is, disturbance, crime, political agita- 
tion and disaffection to England, — these were, and 
are, the Nemesis of absenteeism, a Nemesis visited, 
unfortunately, not on the absentees, but on the 
kingdom itself." 

Morally considered, absenteeism is one of the 
most powerful agents in reducing the Irish tenantry 



152 THE IRISH TENANT TO-DAY. 

to poverty and keeping them in it. Many a land- 
lord who resides always, or nearly always, in Eng- 
land or on the Continent would, if he lived upon 
his own estates, be touched by the distress of his 
dependents. His representative has the strongest 
motive to resist every instinct of humanity : he is 
paid in proportion to the amount of rent he can 
extort from the tenants and send to his distant 
master. Absentee landlords draw out of Ireland 
one-third of the entire rental of the country, not a 
penny of which returns in any form to the country 
and the people producing it. Indeed, it is not in- 
accurate to say that the entire rental of the country 
is an absentee rental, since even the resident land- 
lords have to send abroad for nine-tenths of the 
manufactured articles they use on their farms, in 
their stables and houses, and on their persons. Why 
there can be no general creation of manufactures in 
Ireland while the present landlord system prevails 
has been sufficiently shown in a preceding chapter. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE PEASANT-FARMER IN OTHER COUNTRIES. 

BY peasant proprietor is commonly meant a farm- 
er who owns the land he tills. 
" Since the French Revolution," writes Mr. W. E. 
Baxter, "the feudal laws in France, Switzerland, 
Holland, Belgium, Norway, Germany, North Italy 
and Austria have been abolished. . . . The result of 
this change in all these countries has been, in many 
instances, the breaking up of the large, unwieldy, 
unmanageable estates and the formation of a numer- 
ous and powerful conservative class of small propri- 
etors. . . . The change has been highly beneficial 
wherever it has been brought about, peasants former- 
ly in as miserable a condition as the Irish being now 
contented and prosperous owners of the soil." * " It 
would be difficult, perhaps," says Professor Cairnes, 
" to conceive two modes of existence more utterly 
opposed than the thriftless, squalid and half-starved 
life of the peasant of Munster and Connaught and 

1 Our Land Laws of the Past, by the Right Hon. W. E. Baxter, 
M. P. (London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.), page 17. Mr. 
Baxter's -brochure is an argument for reform of the land laws of 
England, especially in relation to primogeniture and entail. 

153 



154 THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 

that of the frugal, thriving and energetic races that 
have over a great portion of continental Europe — in 
Norway, in Belgium, in Switzerland, in Lombardy — 
and under the most various external conditions, turn- 
ed swamps and deserts into gardens." 1 

Let us look first at that " transition between land 
and sea," that " measureless raft of mud and sand," 
and discover the miracle of peasant proprietary in 
the spot where it is most marvellous. In his charm- 
ing book on Holland, Edmondo de Amicis tells the 
whole story — what it was in the beginning, what it is 
now : " There were vast tempestuous lakes like seas 
touching one another; morass beside morass; one 
tract covered with brushwood after another; im- 
mense forests of pines, oaks and elders traversed by 
hordes of wild horses ; and so thick were these for- 
ests that tradition says one could travel leagues from 
tree to tree without ever putting foot to the ground. 
The deep bays and gulfs carried into the heart of the 
country the fury of the northern tempests. Some 
provinces disappeared once every year under the 
waters of the sea and were nothing but muddy tracts, 
neither land nor water, where it was impossible either 
to walk or to sail. The large rivers, without suffi- 
cient inclination to descend to the sea, wandered 
here and there uncertain of their way, and slept in 
monstrous pools and ponds among the sands of the 
coasts. It was a sinister place, swept by furious 
winds, beaten by obstinate rains, veiled in a perpet- 

* Essays, p. 1 60, 



THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 1 55 

ual fog, where nothing was heard but the roar of 
the sea and the voices of wild beasts and birds of 
the ocean." 

And what is the Holland of to-day ? 

Groningen was the province most difficult to trans- 
form, and even in the sixteenth century a great part 
of it was still uninhabited. De Amicis confirms all 
that Delaveleye, that capable student of peasant 
proprietary, has written of it and its towns and peo- 
ple : " Groningen, in fact, is like a species of republic 
governed by a class of educated peasants ; a new and 
virgin country where no patrician castle rears its 
head above the roof of the tillers of the soil ; a prov- 
ince where the products of the land remain in the 
hands of the cultivators, where wealth and labor al- 
ways go hand in hand and idleness and opulence are 
for ever divided." And to what is this almost ideal 
state to be attributed ? " The description would not 
be complete if I omitted to speak of a certain right 
peculiar to the Groningen peasantry and called bek- 
lem-regt, which is considered as the principal cause 
of the extraordinary prosperity of the province. The 
beklem-regt is the right to occupy a farm with the 
payment of an annual rent, which the proprietor can 
never augment. The right passes to the heirs, col- 
lateral as well as direct, and the holder may transmit 
it by will, may sell it, rent it, raise a mortgage upon it 
even, without the consent of the proprietor of the land. 
Every time, however, that this right passes from one 
hand to another, whether by inheritance or sale, the 



156 THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 

proprietor receives one or two years' rent. The farm- 
buildings belong in general to the possessor of the 
beklem-regt, who, when his right is in any way an- 
nulled, may exact the price of the materials. The 
possessor of the beklem-regt pays all taxes, cannot 
change the form of the property, nor in any way 
diminish its value. The beklem-regt is indivisible. 
One person only can possess it, and consequently 
only one of the heirs can inherit it. However, by pay- 
ing the sum stipulated in case of the passage of the 
beklem-regt from one hand to another, the husband 
may inscribe his wife or the wife her husband, and 
then the consort inherits a part of the right. When 
the possessor is ruined or does not pay his annual 
rent, the beklem-regt is not at once annulled. The 
creditors can cause it to be sold, but the purchaser 
must first of all pay all outstanding debts to the pro- 
prietor." It is unnecessary for the traveller to add 
that thus the farmers have a continuous and strong 
interest in their improving land, " secure as they are 
of the sole enjoyment of all the ameliorations which 
they may introduce into the cultivation ; of not hav- 
ing, like ordinary tenants, to pay a rent which grows 
higher and higher in proportion as they succeed in 
increasing the fertility of the land. They undertake 
the boldest enterprises, introduce innovations and 
carry out the costliest experiments. The legitimate 
recompense of their labor is the entire and certain 
profit that accrues from that labor." And these 
peasants " practise agriculture, not blindly and as if 



THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. I 59 

it were to be contemned, but as a noble occupation 
which demands the exercise of the noblest faculties 
of intelligence and procures for those that follow it 
fortune, social importance and public respect." 1 

The working of peasant proprietary in France is 
most strikingly illustrated by the relation of the agri- 
cultural class to the public debt of that country. In 
1798 the number of holders of rente was 24,791 ; in 
i860 this number had increased to 1,073,381 ; in 
1876 it had risen to 3,473,475; in 1879 it reached 
4,380,933. The annual interest which these holders 
of the national obligation draw on their investment 
is 748,404,971 francs. " It will be seen that the na- 
tional debt in recent years has been steadily under- 
going the process of complete subdivision among 
the population of France, the number of public fund- 
holders having come to approach that of the freeholders 
of the soil!' 1 More than half the people of France 
live by agriculture. Over five millions of the farms 
are under six acres. There are only five hundred 
thousand farms averaging sixty acres, and fifty thou- 
sand averaging six hundred acres. "The contrast 
between the land system of France and England," 
Mr. Cliff Leslie may well assert, " two neighboring 
countries at the head of civilization, may without 
exaggeration be called the most extraordinary spec- 
tacle which European society offers for study to po- 

1 Holland and its People, by Edmondo de Amicis, page 382 et 
seq. 

2 Statesman's Yearbook, 1S80, p. 66. 

10 



l6o THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 

litical and social philosophy." 1 "Of the soil of 
England we may say that nobody knows who own 
it," 2 but the nominal owners do not exceed thirty 
thousand persons. Like so many more Englishmen 
who abhor confiscation when the results are not to 
their liking, Mr. Leslie finds satisfaction in affirming 
that, contrary to prevalent belief, peasant proprietary 
in France did not originate in the confiscation of the 
French Revolution. That a large proportion of the 
small farms did, however, get into the hands of 
working proprietors through those confiscations is 
undeniable. Confiscation in France was done in 
behalf of tenants ; confiscation in Ireland by Eng- 
land was done in behalf of landlords. The contrast 
is again an " extraordinary spectacle." England is 
the only government which in modern times, after 
the decay of feudalism, confiscated land for land- 
lords. Confiscation has taken place in other coun- 
tries, but it has generally been for tenants. In the 
sixteenth century Mr. Leslie finds peasants buying 
small farms in France. It was not the lack of land- 
ed property, he goes on to say, which, two hundred 
years later, left the peasantry in destitution " and 
drove them to furious vengeance." What was it, 
then? "The deprivation of its use by atrocious 
misgovernment and the confiscation of its fruits by 

1 Systems of Land Tenure in Various Countries, p. 336. (Cobden 
Club Essays.) 

2 The Land Question, with Particular Reference to England and 
Scotland, by John Macdonnell (London: Macmillan & Co.), p. 24. 



THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. l6l 

merciless taxation and feudal oppression." The ver- 
dict of the world on the French Revolution does not 
lack a sense of horror ; but if there be any of its 
consequences which humanity instinctively and un- 
qualifiedly approves, it is the wresting of the land 
by the people and its distribution among the people. 
Mr. Leslie describes the cause of the insurrection 
of the peasantry correctly. They had land, indeed, 
but it did not keep them from destitution while their 
noble masters dazzled Europe with their splendid 
luxury. The peasantry were deprived of the ben- 
efits of the land by "atrocious misgovernment." 
They too suffered confiscation of the fruits alike of 
the land and of their labor. They finally arose and 
wreaked a "furious vengeance;" and to-day they 
present to the world an example of thrift, industry, 
patriotism and contentment which the appreciative 
pen of this broad-minded Englishman effectively pre- 
sents. Is he willing to concede that the historian of 
the next century shall tell in the same spirit the fate 
of the Irish peasant ? Let us hope that there will 
be no " furious vengeance " to describe, but that the 
wrongs of the peasant — wrongs which in France 
were wiped out by revolution — shall be righted in 
a peaceful and legal way. 

" The subdivision of the French soil," says Mr. 
Leslie, " which has been the subject of sincere regret 
and pity on the part of many eminent English writers 
and speakers, as well as of much ignorant contempt 
on the part of prejudiced politicians, is really both a 



1 62 THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 

cause and an effect of the increased wealth of every 
part of the population — the seller and buyer of land, 
the land-owner, the farmer and laborer, the country 
and the town." But all the people in France who 
live by agriculture are not land-owners ; there are 
tenant-farmers there. What are the relations be- 
tween them and the landlords ? Mr. Leslie answers 
fully and briefly. There are two kinds of tenure — 
by lease for a money-rent and by metayage, accord- 
ing to which the proprietor and the tenant work the 
farm in partnership, each furnishing a proportion of 
the capital and dividing the produce. The contract 
for metayage is really a lease, and usually extends 
over a term of years. " The truth is," writes Mr. 
Leslie, " the system of short tenures common through- 
out most of Western Europe has a common barbar- 
ous origin. It belongs to a state of agriculture which 
took no thought of a distant future and involved no 
lengthened outlay, and which gave the land frequent 
rest in fallow ; and it belongs to a state of commerce 
in which sales of land were rare, changes of propri- 
etorship equally so, and ideas of making the most 
of landed property commercially non-existent. It 
is right to observe, however, that in many parts of 
France, although the stated period of tenure is com- 
monly short, the farm really remains commonly with 
the same family from father to son, from generation 
to generation, provided only the rent is paid." The 
tenant is never in apprehension of eviction. On the 
contrary, so fortunate is he in the fruits of his toil 



THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 1 63 

that he does not like to encumber himself with a 
long lease, because he intends to buy land and be- 
come himself a proprietor. "Again, although no 
legal customs of tenure for unexhausted improve- 
ments remain in France, where the Code has swept 
away all customary laws, yet compensation for some 
unexhausted improvements exists under the Code. 
... It is fortunate for France not only that peasant 
proprietorship already exists on a great scale, but 
that the tendency of the economic progress of the 
country, as already shown, is to substitute, more and 
more, cultivation by peasant proprietors for cultiva- 
tion by tenants, and to give, more and more, to those 
who remain tenants or laborers the position and sen- 
timents of proprietors." Why would not this be 
fortunate for Ireland and England ? " France," says 
Mr. Leslie in conclusion, " has had only three-quar- 
ters of a century of anything like liberty, and less 
than half a century of tranquillity and industrial 
life." He wrote just on the eve of the Franco- 
Prussian war. Yet he deems the French land sys- 
tem not only " the salvation of the country itself, 
but one of the principal securities for the tranquillity 
and economic progress of Europe." 

The result of the brief and disastrous conflict into 
which the country was plunged by the ambition and 
folly of the last of the emperors furnishes a remark- 
able emphasis for this conclusion. It was her peas- 
ant proprietors and tenant-farmers who subscribed 
with such cheerful alacrity so great a proportion of 



164 THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 

the immense forfeit France had to pay for the fatal 
imperial venture ; it is they who constitute to-day 
the conservatism and strength of the republic. It is 
her free land that makes and will keep France free ; 
and it is the well-recompensed, the industrious and 
the thrifty tillers of the soil that will hold back the 
politicians at the head of the government from rush- 
ing into foreign wars or precipitating either mon- 
archy or anarchy at home. France is stable be- 
cause her land belongs to those who live by it. For 
that reason is she rich, prosperous, contented ; for 
that reason is she to-day one of the preservers of 
the peace of Europe and the most efficient promoter 
of all industries, all arts, fine and industrial, and all 
economic progress. 

Let us go to Prussia. "A people," says John 
Macdonnell, " are what their land system makes 
them ; the soil that they till is stronger than they ; 
and the essence of their history records the changes 
in the ownership of their land. Frugal and indus- 
trious or unfixed and unstable in their ways they are 
according to the nature of their tenure of land. . . . 
Disappointingly feeble as is most political machinery 
to alter men for better or for worse, ... a states- 
man has one instrument which pierces through all 
obstacles and uses men as clay : that instrument is 
legislation affecting land. A Stein or a Hardenberg 
who knows how to use it may shape the morals and 
destiny of a people." l 

1 The Land Question, pp. 4, 5. 



THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 1 65 

Napoleon destroyed the German empire in 1803; 
the edict of emancipation in 1807 laid anew its per- 
manent foundations. That edict freed the peasant 
and the land. Two years later the superstructure 
was begun. The law of 1 8 1 1 made the peasant a 
proprietor; then the empire became invincible. The 
German armies that Napoleon put to rout were serfs 
who had nothing to fight for but their serfdom ; the 
soldier of the new German empire is a freeman who 
has his land and his home and his family to fight for. 

To whom the credit of the creation of peasant 
proprietary in Prussia belongs is not historically 
clear. It should be divided among the king and 
the ministers by whom he was surrounded at that 
period. None of them seemed to fully comprehend 
the scope or the consequences of the momentous 
step. Even Stein wrote that it was reserved for 
Hardenberg to take the advice of a dreamer who 
died in a madhouse, and transform the peasants into 
landlords; 1 but Stein himself procured the signature 
of the king to the edict and promulgated it. The 
law of 181 1, by which the peasant was made the ac- 
tual proprietor and the landlord was indemnified by 
the state for his loss, was Hardenberg's. But when 
its operation became clear to Stein he not only 
adopted it, but provided for its universal application ; 
and when, after the preliminaries were completed, 
the law received the royal assent, well might a com- 

1 The Life and Times of Stein ; or, Germany and Prussia in the 
Napoleonic Age, by J. R. Seeley, vol. i., p. 287. 



1 66 THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 

mentator of the time * declare that there had come 
"the dawn of a golden day upon economic dark- 
ness, and a new creation rising out of the ruins of 
destructive war ; never had any public measure been 
taken which had more happily or more beneficially 
united the private happiness of many families with 
the interest of the state." 

To-day half the people of Prussia are engaged in 
agriculture under conditions which insure the per- 
manence of the state more effectually than all the 
enactments of Bismarck. The first Napoleon easily 
threw serfs into consternation ; the last Napoleon 
found a phalanx of free farmer-soldiers a wall which 
he could not shatter, and whose stones flew upon 
him for his destruction. The French army which 
the last Napoleon hastily precipitated into a war 
which the French nation did not solicit was compos- 
ed chiefly of the undisciplined crowds of the cities ; 
the huge German army was drawn chiefly from the 
bone and muscle of the German land. The men 
had their farms and their homes to return to when 
the conflict was over. They had not sought the 
war, either ; but, since it was thrust upon them, they 
fought like men who wanted it quickly ended, so 
that they might return to their homes and their 
fields. The statement that the hurriedly-augmented 
French army, whose valor was so superior to their 
discipline and their generalship, was largely a col- 
lection of city multitudes is amply warranted by the 

1 Stagemann, quoted by Seeley, vol. i., p. 462. 



THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 1 67 

time in which it was gotten together and by the 
statistics showing the transformation of the rural 
into an urban population in the ten preceding years. 
Their valor could have been no greater had every 
man been a veteran, but they fought with dash, not 
with discipline ; with the enthusiasm of national 
glory, not with the steadiness and endurance of 
those who have homes and farms awaiting them, 
and whose commanders know the art of war as well 
as they the art of husbandry. In the American re- 
bellion whole regiments, composed, probably, of 
men who had never smelled gunpowder, fought with 
astonishing bravery and strength. What was the 
substitute for discipline ? The home to which they 
hoped to return ; the citizenship which protected the 
home, and which was involved in the conflict. Give 
a man the right and the power to be a proprietor — 
to acquire and to hold property — and he must be the 
best of soldiers, because he is defending his own. 
Make a soldier of the man who cannot own and 
cannot acquire property, and he is without the high- 
est incentive to bravery. Had the French army of 
ten years ago been drawn from the farmers of France 
and subjected to the same drill which the German 
troops carried to the field, with equal generalship, 
shall it be prudently said that the result would have 
been precisely the same? But the supreme virtue 
of the possession of property is not that it makes a 
man a soldier : it is that it makes him a man of 
peace. Property is the police of the world ; it is the 



1 68 THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 

preserver of the world's peace. Is it not strange 
that peasant proprietary has not occurred to English 
statesmanship as the permanent pacifier of Ireland ? 

Shall we go to Russia? In the cold, slow and 
barbarous North, England should not find much to 
learn. Yet she is perplexed with the problem how 
to make five millions of her subjects owners of twen- 
ty million acres of the land on which tuey live. The 
czar, with no constitution to restrain him, with no 
law but his own will, with little statesmanship — for 
what is statesmanship but the antithesis of despot- 
ism ? — a Russian czar found a way to take an area 
equal to one-seventh of the habitable globe, and so 
transform eight times the population of Ireland that 
they ceased to be serfs and could become pro- 
prietors. Can the Irish problem become insoluble 
in the light of Russian emancipation and Russian 
peasant proprietary ? Twenty per cent, of the entire 
cultivable area of Russia is owned and tilled by 
peasant proprietors. Does any thoughtful reader 
of history need to be told that the emperor to whom 
that humane and redeeming act is due thereby saved 
his throne, postponed revolution — in a country with- 
out a constitution it must eventually come — and at- 
tached the army of peasants so strongly to his per- 
son that they are to-day his preservers and the pro- 
tection of property and life in the empire ? 

Nor did the emperor create peasant proprietary 
by wholesale confiscation : the owners of the serfs 
were compensated for their land on a scale of pay- 



THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 1 69 

ment by which the previous labor of the serf was 
estimated at a yearly rental of six per cent. Of the 
sum required to carry out the provisions of the 
edict the peasant was required to pay twenty per 
cent. ; the government advanced the balance, secur- 
ing itself at intervals extending over forty-nine years. 
All these arrangements were completed in 1865 ; 
from that time serfdom entirely ceased in Russia, 
and the progress of peasant proprietary has been 
uninterrupted. Said the emperor Nicholas to the 
marshals of the noblesse in 1856: "It is better to 
abolish serfage from above than to await the time 
when it will begin to abolish itself from below." 1 
Catholic emancipation was not granted from above 
until Wellington told the king that it would be 
snatched from below; the Irish Church was not 
abolished from above until Gladstone saw that the 
foundations were in imminent danger. Wellington 
told the king he must choose between emancipation 
and insurrection; Gladstone has publicly avowed 
that the much-derided Fenian made the disestablish- 
ment a political necessity. In Russia, then, a czar 
allows reforms from above in order to take the 
credit to the state for doing voluntarily what it 
might have to do under compulsion; the English 
government allows no reforms from above except 
under stress of compulsion from below — at least, in 
Ireland. 

Certainly at least in Ireland ; for let us turn to 

1 Russia, by D. Mackenzie Wallace, p. 485. 



170 THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 

India. What is the story of British legislation there 
concerning land ? 

The area of British India is eight hundred and 
ninety-nine thousand three hundred and forty-one 
square miles ; the population is one hundred and 
ninety-one million ninety-six thousand six hundred 
and three. The government claims the land as its 
own, and has regularly drawn from it a revenue 
largely in excess of that from salt and opium to- 
gether : for ten years past it has averaged twenty 
million pounds. Before the mutiny the East India 
Company was so thrifty a landlord that it drew one- 
half its total receipts from the land. While the im- 
perial legislation concerning land in India was not 
uniform in all the provinces, much being left to the 
apparent exigences of situation and time, certain 
principles, it is asserted, are found to be generally 
present An acknowledged deference has been shown 
to claims of clear title of native origin ; the greatest 
respect has been shown for the rights of working 
farmers; the tenants have been carefully protected 
against the oppression of their landlords. The state, 
as chief landlord in India, has held the land, it is 
alleged, not as its absolute property, but as a posses- 
sion in partnership with the tenant, whose right to 
live off it was the first of all rights. 

The pen of the historian will yet point to the fact, 
already sufficiently apparent, that just in proportion 
as the imperial government dealt justly with the 
Indian tenant the government of the empire was 



THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 171 

submitted to, and that the enormous expenses which 
the treasury has had to meet for the retention of the 
Indian domain would have been considerably lessened 
had the rights of tenants been more sacredly and 
more judiciously considered. 

If we should take the assertions of the govern- 
ment commissioner, Sir George Campbell, the land 
legislation for India has been in some provinces 
ideally perfect. How strange, then, that famines are 
occurring there with dreadful frequency ! not famines 
of food — for the land continues to pay enormous 
profits on its products — but famines of money. The 
middleman and the state take everything the land 
can be induced to yield, and the peasant has neither 
produce nor money left. 

Speaking of the remarkable liberality of the em- 
pire in settling disputes of title, Sir George Campbell 
says : " Renouncing the ordinary de facto powers of 
native princes, we have recognized as valid and bind- 
ing all grants made by any authority which was at 
the time competent to make them, and have given 
the grantees complete and certain tenure, instead of 
the precarious tenure at the pleasure of the prince at 
the time being." Insecurity of tenure is obnoxious, 
it will be observed, in India. " All incomplete ten- 
ures having some show of long possession or other 
equitable claim we have treated very tenderly, either 
maintaining them or giving them terms of very easy 
compromise." There are tenures of long possession 
in Ireland in which there is the claim of bog made 



172 THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 

into meadow, of mountain turned into pasture, by 
the industry of the tenant ; yet the landlord may 
eject the man who did it all, and there is no law to 
compel him to take into account any claim whatever 
upon him or his property. But the rights of the 
Mohammedan were most " tenderly treated," lest 
any injustice should be done him. "We have not 
only professed this indulgent treatment, but we have 
embodied these lenient rules in public laws, and have 
opened the courts of justice to all who wish to appeal 
to them from the decisions of the executive officers." 
All lands to which titles were thus procured are 
revenue-free for ever. 

But now as to lands held subject to revenue, lands 
the title of which resides in the state. Is it absolute 
title, or is it a partnership with the tenant who oc- 
cupies and tills, and with the middleman who is a 
kind of political support of the state and lives off 
the land and the working tenant? 

There were land laws and customs of tenure in 
India before the British conquered the country. In 
those laws and customs nearly everything that the 
Irish tenant is begging to-day were to be found. 
There was compensation for improvements ; there 
was practically fixity of tenure, so long as the rent 
was paid. 

Bengal was the first province in which the British 
applied reform. Sir George Campbell points out that 
the government recognized the tenant as entitled to 
fixity of tenure while he paid his rent, and as entitled 



THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 1 73 

to protection against an increase of rent at the caprice 
of the middlemen, from whom the government collected 
the land revenue, and who held a curious position be- 
tween the tenant and the state. The law became set- 
tled that every working tenant who was in possession 
at least twelve years at uniform rent was entitled to 
his holding for ever at that rent. Sir George Camp- 
bell is of opinion that these arrangements were just, 
and that the subsequent ground for complaint is to 
be found in the failure properly to carry them out. 
But let us get at them more closely. The tenant- 
farmer is the ryot ; the landlord from whom he leased 
was the zemeendar. The state had nothing to do 
with the ryot except to protect him against the 
zemeendar. The latter was the nominal landlord : 
he executed the lease ; he collected the rent from 
the ryot ; but the state claimed to divide with both 
him and the ryot the real ownership of the land and 
its produce. The share which the state claimed was 
ten-elevenths of what the zemeendar got from the 
ryot. Is it any wonder that the zemeendars were 
soon engaged in the general enterprise of extracting 
almost eleven-elevenths of all the ryot could get out 
of the land ? The historian of land tenure in India 
admits " English ideas of the rights of a landlord 
and of the advantage of non-interference began to 
prevail." " It has been epigrammatically said," re- 
ports Campbell, " that Lord Cornwallis designed to 
make English landlords in Bengal, and only suc- 
ceeded in making Irish landlords." 



174 THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 

In the north-west provinces the early legislation 
differed somewhat from that in Bengal, but in 1822 
the regulation was adopted which is the basis of all 
subsequent land law in Northern India. Occupants 
w r ere to have long leases with the right of renewal 
at revaluation, and these rights were to be transfer- 
able — a recognition of Ulster tenant right in India, 
although it was not recognized as law in Ireland. 
The ryots were to be secure in their holdings 
so long as they paid their rent. Ryots who had 
been twelve years in occupancy were deemed to 
have acquired the right permanently, and eviction 
was never thought of by any one. If the zemeen- 
dar desired to raise the rent, he had to go before a 
court, prove that the permanent value had been in- 
creased in some way other than by the exertion of 
the tenant, and thus obtain the power to increase 
the rent. " The course of procedure was, however, 
difficult ; the right hardly known." Occupancy 
rents continued unvaried until the government in- 
troduced a new rent law. But even this did not 
secure peace. The principles were correct enough 
so far as they went. Why should mutiny arise ? It 
was found that the principle was better than the prac- 
tice. It " was found that the position of the ryots 
had not been sufficiently defined," discreetly remarks 
Mr. Campbell. 

The Punjab did not become British territory until 
1849. In settling the land question there the same 
principles were ostentatiously adopted. The tenants 








it^rnjL^ ■-■ : --■ ■ '.. l_±jM 



THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 1 77 

were carefully protected. The legislation of 1859 
confers upon ryots for ever their holdings at an un- 
changeable rent. If any increase is to be allowed 
the zemeendar in the rent, he can get it only after 
demonstrating in court that the value of the hold- 
ing has been permanently improved without expense 
to or by the labor of the ryot. If a ryot desires to 
surrender a lease, he may carry away with him 
everything he placed on the land which is not sunk 
in the soil. When the thirty years' settlement of 
the north-western provinces expired a new settlement 
took place, and the government reduced its propor- 
tion of the rent. Instead of two-thirds, it was con- 
tent with one-half. 

In Oude, after the mutiny, a different course was 
tried. The ryot was no longer to be regarded as 
having any rights worthy of consideration. The 
government was going to be a strong one ; it should 
be a government of landlords. So all the land was 
confiscated, and was assigned again according to the 
plan followed by Elizabeth in Ireland. A judicial 
decision was obtained dissipating the principles which 
the government had professed to follow in all pre- 
vious legislation. After much discussion it was de- 
termined to protect a few families who had hereditary 
claims or whose loyalty was above suspicion. All 
other tenants were reduced to tenancies-at-will, and 
the system of rack-rents went speedily into opera- 
tion. 

Campbell writes : " Already we hear of the service 
11 



I78 THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 

of notices of ejectment in large numbers, and, on 
the other hand, of combinations of the tenants to 
resist these proceedings." And the government lent 
money to the landlords, not to improve their estates, 
but to stave off their creditors. 

In the central provinces the ryot rights were re- 
spected. 

Summing up all the legislation affecting the ten- 
ure of land in India by Great Britain, Sir George 
Campbell thus describes its present status : 

Oude : Great zemeendars, almost complete own- 
ers, with few subordinate rights. 

North-west provinces : Moderate proprietors ; old 
ryots have also a measure of fixity of tenure at a 
fair rent. 

Bengal : Great zemeendars whose rights are lim- 
ited. Numerous subproprietors of several grades 
under them. Ancient ryots who have both fixity of 
tenure and fixity of rent. Other old ryots who have 
fixity of tenure at fair rent, variable from time to 
time. 

Central provinces : Moderate proprietors. An- 
cient ryots who are subproprietors of their holdings 
at rents fixed for the term of each settlement. Other 
old ryots who have fixity of tenure at fair rent. 

Madras and Bombay : The ryots are complete 
masters of the soil, subject only to payment of rev- 
enue. 

It will be observed, therefore, that, with the excep- 
tion of a single province, Great Britain has given to 



THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 1 79 

its Indian subjects a virtual peasant proprietary, more 
or less modified, or, where there is tenantry, fixity of 
tenure and reasonable fixity of rent. Great Britain 
has done more, therefore, for her Indian subjects in 
half a century than she has done for her Irish sub- 
jects in nearly seven centuries. The principles which 
she has generally professed in adjusting land-settle- 
ments in India are the principles which the Irish 
tenant has not been able to induce her legislators 
to recognize in their land legislation for Ireland. 

The state is the only landlord in Bombay. There 
the middleman has been almost entirely dispensed with, 
and the government deals directly with the tenant. 
There, then, we shall find the ideal relationship of 
landlord and tenant according to the standard of 
modern British statesmanship. 

" The survey and assessment of the Bombay pres- 
idency has been almost completed on a system in- 
troduced and carefully elaborated twenty years ago. 
The whole country is surveyed and mapped and the 
fields distinguished by permanent boundary-marks, 
which it is penal to remove ; the soil of each field is 
classed according to its intrinsic qualities and to the 
climate ; and the rate of assessment to be paid on 
fields of each class in each subdivision of a district 
is fixed on a careful consideration of the value of the 
crops they are capable of producing, as affected by 
the proximity to market-towns, canals, railways and 
similar external incidents, but not by improvements 
made by the ryot himself. This rate was probably 



l8o THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 

about one-half the yearly value of the land when 
fixed, but, owing to the general improvement of the 
country, it is not more than from a fourth to an eighth 
in the districts which have not been settled quite re- 
cently. The measurement and classification of the 
soil are made once for all ; but the rate of assessment 
is open to revision at the end of every thirty years, 
in order that the ryot, on the one hand, may have the 
certainty of the long period as an inducement to lay 
out capital, and the state, on the other, may secure 
that participation in the advantages accruing from 
the general progress of society to which its joint- 
proprietorship in the land entitles it. In the thirty 
years' revision,- moreover, only public improvements 
and a general change of prices, but not improvements 
effected by the ryots themselves, are considered as 
grounds for enhancing the assessment. The ryot's 
tenure is permanent, provided he pays the assess- 
ment." 1 

In Bombay, therefore, where the English govern- 
ment is sole and actual landlord, we find, first, fixity 
of tenure ; second, no increase in rent except once 
every thirty years, and then after a fair valuation, in 
which the improvements effected by the tenant are 
not made the cause of increasing his rent ; third, the 
state makes all the improvements of a permanent 
kind at its own expense. The rent is fixed on a 
fair valuation of the producing-power of the farm 
and the relative cost of getting the crop to market. 

1 Statesman's Yearbook, 1880, p. 681. 



THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. l8l 

Such is land law under the English government 
in Bombay. What has been land law under the 
Irish landlord, protected by the English government 
in Ireland ? No security of tenure ; perpetual notice 
to quit. No fixity of rent ; perpetual liability to in- 
crease. No inducement to improve the land ; every 
inducement not to improve it. No assurance that if 
the tenant spends money and labor in improving the 
land, he will not be compelled to pay more rent on 
account of the improvement effected by himself; on 
the contrary, a moral certainty that the rent will be 
increased the moment the improvements are discov- 
ered. In India the English government recognizes 
the tiller of the soil as in partnership with the lord 
of the soil ; in Ireland the law recognizes the tiller 
of the soil as having no rights except what the 
lord chooses to grant him. 

Which stands condemned, the English government 
in Bombay or the English government in Ireland ? 
Are British subjects to be imprisoned in Ireland for 
requesting for themselves the rights of British sub- 
jects in Bombay? Or is it better to be an Indian 
than to be an Irishman, to be a Mohammedan than 
to be a Christian ? 

This is the question the Irish National Land 
League put to the most liberal of English ministers, 
Mr. Gladstone, with whom is officially associated that 
eminent advocate of peasant proprietary Mr. John 
Bright. The answer was, first, the arrest of Michael 
Davitt, the founder of the Land League, a one-armed 



1 82 THE PEASANT-FARMER ELSEWHERE. 

invalid ; next, the arrest of John Dillon ; then a co- 
ercion act giving to one Englishman in Ireland, Mr. 
Forster, the power to arrest without accusation, and 
to keep in prison for an indefinite period without 
trial, as many men and women in Ireland as he may- 
choose to rob of their liberty ; lastly, a Land Act 
whose provision for peasant proprietary amounts 
simply to nothing. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

PECULIAR FEATURES OF IRISH LAND- 
LORDISM. 

THE first organized effort to recover the lands 
of Ireland for the people to whom they belong 
was begun in 1879 wnen the Irish National Land 
League was formed. Before entering upon the 
narrative of that constitutional and peaceful but 
now suppressed organization, it is necessary to con- 
sider the condition to which the people of Ireland 
have been reduced by the exactions of the landlords, 
who were acting within English law and were pro- 
tected by English armies — by armies, for the con- 
stabulary of Ireland are not policemen : they are 
soldiers armed with bayonets, equipped better than 
were the warriors of Napoleon, and drilled more 
thoroughly than were the English at Waterloo. 
There are fifteen thousand of these in Ireland, 
assisting landlords to oppress five millions of un- 
armed, undrilled, hungry and, it must be said, meek 
people ; for what other epithet can justly be applied 
to a nation which has submitted for so many cen- 
turies to misgovernment without a parallel even in 

183 



184 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

Russia? The constabulary of Ireland, a landlord- 
army in time of peace, number more than half the 
available men of the entire standing army of fifty 
millions of free people. 

It has been demonstrated by the bloodless logic 
of facts that it is the landlords of Ireland — who 
obtain their legal rights there by inheritance from 
land-stealers who had no legal rights — who make 
the famines in Ireland. It was the famines which 
led to the formation of the first organized movement 
to recover the lands for the heirs of their rightful 
owners. 

Famines were frequent in the seventeenth century ; 
they were not unknown in the eighteenth ; and Hely 
Hutchinson, already quoted, describes the condition 
of the people in even the large cities, reduced to 
street-begging on account of the suppression of 
Irish trade and the consequent poverty of all classes. 
Irish famines — it should be repeated so often that 
the fact shall be ever-present before the eyes of the 
American — are not natural famines, they are artificial 
famines ; they are made, not by the Lord, but by 
the landlord; they are not famines of food — there 
is always plenty of that in Ireland — but famines of 
money with which to buy food from landlords who 
have taken the fruits of the soil as rent for land to 
which they have generally no moral title. It will 
be needless to go farther back than to the fam- 
ine of 1847 to ascertain precisely what "famine" 
means. 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 1 85 

The English government has occasionally appoint- 
ed commissions to inquire into the condition of the 
people of Ireland, but it has rarely acted on their 
advice, which has usually been sound. In 1845 a 
commission reported as follows : " The agricultural 
laborer of Ireland continues to suffer the greatest 
privations and hardships ; he continues to depend 
upon casual and precarious employment for subsist- 
ance; he is still badly housed, badly fed, badly 
clothed and badly paid for his labor. . . . We can- 
not forbear expressing our strong sense of the patient 
endurance which the laboring classes have generally 
exhibited under suffering greater, we believe, than 
the people of any other country in Europe have to 
sustain." There was no famine then. 

Of the small farmers the report said : " It would 
be impossible to describe adequately the privations 
which they and their families almost habitually and 
patiently endure. It will be seen in the evidence 
that in many districts their only food is the potato, 
their only beverage water ; that their cabins are sel- 
dom a protection against the weather ; that a bed or 
a blanket is a rare luxury; and that nearly in all 
their pig and their manure-heap constitute their only 
property." That was in 1845, when there was no 
famine. 

The landlords continued to extort everything that 
the land and all the labor on it produced. The little 
farmers sold their crops to pay the rent of their 
holdings, but they still had potatoes and water on 



1 86 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

which to Teed themselves and their families. The 
next year the potato blight appeared. Then came 
famine — not of food, but of money with which to buy 
it. Let those who saw enacted the scenes of the next 
two years describe them. 

The first witness is John Mitchel : " There is no 
need to recount how the assistant-barristers and 
sheriffs, aided by the police, tore down the roof-trees 
and ploughed up the hearths of village after village ; 
how the farmers and their wives and little ones in 
wild dismay trooped along the highways ; how in 
some hamlets by the seaside, most of the inhabitants 
being already dead, an adventurous traveller would 
come upon some family eating a famished ass ; how 
maniac mothers stowed away their dead children to 
be devoured at midnight ; how Mr. Darcy of Clifden 
describes a humane gentleman going to a village near 
that place with some crackers and standing at the 
door of the house, ' and when he threw the crackers 
to the children (for he was afraid to enter) the mother 
attempted to take them from them ;' how husband 
and wife fought like wolves for the last morsel of 
food in the house ; how families, when all was eaten 
and no hope left, took their last look at the sun, built 
up their cottage doors that none might see them die 
or hear their groans, and were found weeks afterward 
skeletons on their own hearth ; how the ' law ' was 
vindicated all this while ; how the arms bills were 
diligently put in force and many examples were 
made ; how starving wretches were transported for 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 1 87 

stealing vegetables at night; how overworked cor- 
oners declared they would hold no more inquests ; 
how Americans sent corn, and the very Turks — yea, 
negro slaves — sent money for alms, which the British 
government was not ashamed to administer to the 
1 sister-country ;' and how in every one of these years 
— 1846, 1 847 and 1848 — Ireland was exporting to Eng- 
land food to the value of fifteen million pounds ster- 
ling, and had on her own soil at each harvest good 
and ample provision for double her own population, 
notwithstanding the potato blight." 

The next is Alexander M. Sullivan, now member 
of Parliament. The passage is from New Ireland : 
" I saw the horrible phantasmagoria — would to God 
it were but that ! — pass before my eyes. Blank, 
stolid dismay, a sort of stupor, fell upon the people, 
contrasting remarkably with the fierce energy put 
forth before. It was no uncommon sight to see the 
cottier and his little family seated on the garden-fence 
gazing all day long in moody silence at the blighted 
plot that had been their last hope. Nothing could 
arouse them. You spoke ; they answered not. You 
tried to cheer them ; they shook their heads. I never 
saw so sudden and so terrible a transformation. . . . 
I doubt if the world ever saw so huge a demoraliza- 
tion, so vast a degradation, visited upon a once high- 
spirited and sensitive people. All over the country 
large iron boilers were set up in which what was 
called soup was concocted, later on Indian meal stir- 
about was boiled. Around these boilers on the road- 



1 88 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

side there daily moaned and shrieked and fought and 
scurried crowds of gaunt, cadaverous creatures that 
had once been men or women in the image of God. 
The feeding of dogs in a kennel was far more decent 
and orderly. I once thought — ay, and often bitterly 
said in public and private — that never, never would 
our people recover the shameful humiliation of that 
brutal public soup-boiler scene. I frequently stood 
and watched till tears blinded me and I almost 
choked with grief and passion. It was heartbreak- 
ing, almost maddening, to see. But help for it there 
was none. . . . Soon beneath the devouring pangs 
of starvation the famishing people poured into the 
workhouses, which soon choked with the dying and 
the dead. Such privations had been endured in every 
case before this hated ordeal was faced that the peo- 
ple entered the bastille merely to die. The parting 
scenes of husband and wife, father, mother and chil- 
dren, at the board-room door would melt a heart of 
stone. Too well they felt that it was an eternal sev- 
erance, and that this loving embrace was to be the 
last on earth. The warders tore them asunder — the 
husband from the wife, the mother from the child — 
for ' discipline ' required that it should be so. But, 
with the famine-fever in every ward and the air 
around them laden with death, they knew their fate, 
and parted like victims at the foot of the guillotine. 
It was not long until the workhouses overflowed and 
could admit no more. . . . The first remarkable sign 
of the havoc death was making was the decline and 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 1 89 

disappearance of funerals : there was a rapid decline 
in the number of attendants, until at length persons 
were stopped on the road and requested to assist in 
conveying the corpse a little farther. Soon, alas ! 
neither coffin nor shroud could be supplied. Daily 
in the street and on the footway some poor creature 
lay down as if to sleep and presently was stiff and 
stark. In our district it was a common occurrence 
to find, on opening the front-door in early morning, 
leaning against it the corpse of some victim who in 
the night-time had ' rested ' in its shelter. We raised 
a public subscription and employed two men with 
horse and cart to go around each day and gather up 
the dead. One by one they were taken to a great 
pit at Ardnabrahir Abbey and dropped through the 
hinged bottom of a ' trap ' coffin into a common grave 
below. In the remoter rural districts even this rude 
sepulture was impossible. In the field and by the 
ditch-side the victims lay as they fell till some char- 
itable hand was found to cover them with the ad- 
jacent soil. . . . Whole families perished unvisited 
and unassisted. By levelling above their corpses the 
hovel in which they died the neighbors gave them a 
grave. . . . Under the pressure of hunger ravenous 
creatures prowled around barn and store-house steal- 
ing corn, potatoes, cabbage, turnips — anything, in a 
word, that might be eaten." 

The English government was present while these 
scenes were being enacted. Any one who supposes 
that no government, even a government of Hotten- 



190 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

tots or Apaches, would permit such scenes, may rest 
assured that the government was indeed present. 
Here is the indisputable evidence : "Bantry Sessions. 
— Timothy Leary and Mary Leary were indicted for 
that they, on the 14th January, at Oakmount, did 
feloniously steal twenty turnips and fifty parsnips, 
the property of James Gillman. Found guilty. Sen- 
tence : Transportation for seven years." 

The next witness is a landlord's agent. His name 
is William Steuart Trench, and he has written a book 
entitled Realities of Irish Life. He was a landlord's 
agent, and his book abounds in cant and self-com- 
placency; he certainly exaggerates nothing at the 
expense of the class to which he belongs : " When I 
first reached Kenmare, in the winter of 1849-50, the 
form of destitution had changed in some degree, but 
it was still very great. It was true that people no 
longer died of starvation, but they were dying nearly 
as fast of fever, dysentery and scurvy within the walls 
of the workhouse. Food there was now in abun- 
dance, but to entitle the people to obtain it they were 
compelled to go into the workhouse and ' auxiliary ' 
sheds until these were crowded almost to suffoca- 
tion." 

The American reader may marvel why starving 
men, women and children should not be given food 
without compelling them to incur the risk of death 
from fever if they escaped death from hunger ; but 
this was another way the English government had 
of showing how desirous it was to save the lives of 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. I9I 

its Irish subjects. The late Earl Beaconsfield said 
that there were worse evils than Irish famines, mean- 
ing that a reduction of the population was a blessing-. 
Some economists, more humane, have urged that 
emigration should be promoted to reduce the pop- 
ulation, on the ground that the country is incapable 
of supporting so many. But it has been established 
by those whose testimony is unanswerable that Ire- 
land is able to support twenty millions of people ; 
and it is a fact perfectly authenticated that, while her 
people were actually dying by tens of thousands in 
the pangs of hunger, she was exporting, says John 
Mitchel, " food enough to sustain eight millions." 

Mr. Trench, the landlord's agent, continues : " Sev- 
eral of the respectable shopkeepers informed me that 
at this period four or five dead bodies were frequent- 
ly found in the streets or on the flags in the morning, 
the remains of poor people who had wandered in 
from the country in search of food, and that they 
dreaded to open their door lest a corpse should be 
found leaning against it." This was three years 
after the blight of the potato ; the country was still 
in the famine. The government had had ample time 
to go to the rescue of the starving ; but, says Mr. 
Trench, " the quantity of food given was so small, 
and the previous destitution through which they had 
passed was so severe, that nearly as many died now 
under the hands of the guardians as had perished 
before by actual starvation." 

A farmer in County Cavan, who is at present vis- 



192 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

iting with his children in the city of Philadelphia, 
has told me a famine-fact which I have never seen 
stated. He was steward of certain public works at 
the famine-time. So weak had the strongest men 
become that they were unable to stand upright while 
laboring on the roads ; many women who were glad 
to do the same work were missing portions of every 
day, compelled to lie down in the fields from utter 
exhaustion ; and the kind-hearted steward, whose 
duty it was to report for the receipt of the pittance 
allowed only those on actual duty, was daily obliged 
to shut his eyes as he passed the places where the 
women should have been toiling, in order that he 
might excuse, to himself at least, his failure to re- 
port their absence and thereby save them the few 
pennies grudgingly granted. That the government 
agents connived to slay the people is also well at- 
tested. This upright and sturdy man informed the 
writer that to keep down the tax for the support of 
the poor the next year absolutely necessary food 
was often withheld by those having it to distribute. 
Each parish was assessed in proportion to the num- 
ber of paupers who received relief; the fewer re- 
ported, the lower the landlords' taxes the year fol- 
lowing. Many victims were undoubtedly sent into 
famine-graves to diminish the landlords' expenditure. 
Mr. Trench promised work to the people at Ken- 
mare : " Three hundred gaunt, half-famished men 
and nearly as many boys and women appeared in 
my field the next morning, all of them claiming my 




! -m 



"-■•'I 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 1 95 

promise, but none of them having any tools where- 
with to labor." The very hovels had been robbed 
to raise at auction, for the landlord, some fraction of 
arrears of rent ! " Here was a new dilemma. The 
offer of employment had been accepted with only 
too great avidity ; but the creatures had not a spade 
nor a pickaxe nor a working-tool amongst them." 
He procured some tools, " and, partly by buying, 
partly by borrowing, and by making some of them 
work with their hands, I managed to keep them 
employed." 

The agent found that a more economical step 
would be to pay the passage of a considerable num- 
ber of the people to America. The landlord agreed 
to furnish the money, purely as a means of evading 
the tax which the poor would be on the estate, and 
three thousand five hundred paupers were shipped 
by Lord Lansdowne to this country to get rid of 
them. Perhaps Americans may yet inquire by what 
right His Lordship manufactures paupers for ship- 
ment, and by what clause in international law he is 
justified in delivering them on American soil, to be 
supported here until they recover from the effects 
of His Lordship's process of reducing them from 
manhood to pauperism. 

While the wretched victims of landlordism were 
dying they were in many instances driven off their 
little holdings by landlords' commands — not be ex- 
ported at their expense, but simply to die on the 
highways. Mr. George Sigerson tells in his History 
12 



I96 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

of Land Tenures in Ireland that the " tenantry were 
driven out at the point of the bayonet with a re- 
morseless cruelty which has never been paralleled 
in any time nor in any country. The transplantation 
of Cromwell was a merciful and considerate act in 
comparison with these ruthless devastations ; for 
their authors spared neither babes at the breast, 
pregnant mothers nor dying men, but from the 
homes their fathers had erected thrust all forth, and 
not unfrequently in the midst of rigorous winters 
and beneath pitiless storms of snow and sleet." 

Mr. Sigerson quotes Lord Clarendon, British 
minister of foreign affairs in 1869, addressing an 
English agricultural society : " They were practical 
men, and he would ask any gentleman present if he 
were to take a farm at will upon which the landed 
proprietor never did, and never intended to do, any- 
thing, and were to build upon the farm a house and 
homestead and effectually drain the land, and then 
be turned out on a six months' notice or less, would 
any language be strong enough to condemn such 
a felonious act as that?" This very day tenants 
are being evicted in Ireland by bayonets under 
precisely these conditions. Many fell behind in 
the rents two years ago on account of the famine 
and have not been able to pay up ; and Gladstone 
permitted the House of Lords to so amend the new 
Land Act as to exclude these unfortunate people 
from its benefits. There have been at least three 
thousand evictions in Ireland this year, and we shall 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 1 97 

learn from eye-witnesses what eviction means in 
1 88 1, as we have learned from eye-witnesses what 
it meant thirty years ago. 

If we go back fifty years, we find the Irish land- 
lord the same man that he is to-day. A now rare, 
but to the humanitarian and the student of political 
economy quaint and valuable, book, entitled An 
Address to the Landlords of Ireland on Subjects 
connected with the Melioration of the Lower Classes , 
by Martin Doyle, and published in Dublin, London 
and Edinburgh, arraigns the landlords for precisely 
the evils which exist in Ireland to-day. The volume 
is not political, but social, and the author defines 
these to be the causes which had then created 
universal poverty in Ireland among the workers of 
the soil : 

1. The want of sufficient employment; 

2. The indolence and inattention of a large num- 
ber of the landed proprietary, their want of enter- 
prise, and their neglect of their estates ; 

3. Absenteeism ; 

4. The wholesale evictions. 

This is the picture Doyle presents of Ireland in 
the year (1831) in which he wrote: " Vagrancy and 
suffering, and sometimes famine, on which hang 
pestilence and every misery at which the heart of 
philanthropy sickens, are so familiar to their experi- 
ence that the resident proprietors of the soil are in 
general little affected by circumstances. ... If a sol- 
itary group of woe-worn, houseless parents, followed 



I98 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

by their ill-clothed offspring through the daily cold 
and wearisome pilgrimage that utter destitution 
renders necessary to the prolongation of that life to 
which even misery will cling, clad in the torn and 
threadbare blanket which at night is to be the only 
covering of their exhausted frames in some cheerless 
hovel, — if such a picture were only to be seen in its 
dismal coloring here and there, it is easy to conceive 
with what intensity of feeling it would be viewed. 
. . . But the eye of the resident landlord is accus- 
tomed to the aspect of squalid wretchedness ; ... he 
rolls in his comfortable chariot to the house of 
mirth and feasting without a sigh for the wretched- 
ness of those to whom the crumbs that fall from his 
table would be a high-prized boon." As for absen- 
teeism, " its lamentable effects are unhappily too 
apparent for ingenuity to palliate or selfishness to 
excuse." 

Doyle points out to the Irish landlords the excel- 
lent example to be found on certain English estates, 
and then — a false prophet, as fifty years of misery 
attest — he says : " The facilities of steam-intercourse 
with Great Britain are so great that Ireland must 
rapidly share the advantages which every province 
of England enjoys." A false prophet ; for England 
has drawn Ireland more closely to her as a bear 
hugs its victim in its savage embrace. Steam has 
more swiftly brought from England to Ireland bay- 
onets and coercion laws, and from her rich and 
generous bosom it has the more speedily borne 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 1 99 

away the wealth that never goes back by steam or 
by sail. Not only has closer intercourse brought 
Ireland no new advantages from her foreign ruler, 
but it is an almost startling truth that it is the poor 
of England who have been benefited at the expense 
of the poorer Irish. No English agitator is in a 
prison to-day for demanding lower rents for the 
English tenant-farmers ; yet this telegram appears in 
an American journal with strong English predilec- 
tions (the quotation is from the New York Herald, 
November 6, 1881): " Lord Fitzwilliam has remitted 
unconditionally the past half-year's rent of all his 
tenants. Many other English landed proprietors 
are making large deductions, thus taking the sting 
out of the land agitation in England." Thus does 
history repeat itself. While Irish tenants, for whom 
the agitation was made, are being evicted for not 
paying arrears of rent which a season of famine 
rendered unavoidable, and while three hundred of 
their leaders are in prison, refused bail and denied 
trial, the English tenants, who have suffered no 
famine, receive a half-year's rent as a voluntary 
gift from their landlords. So in 1829, when four- 
fifths of the people of Ireland were still without 
religious liberty, one of the conditions which the 
English government attached to its concession — 
a concession yielded only because the country was 
on the brink of insurrection — was that the voters 
in Ireland who paid forty shillings rent should be 
deprived of their votes. This was done, and the 



200 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

suffrage was given instead to the forty-shilling free- 
holders of England. 

Another almost as striking illustration of the truth 
that time and closer intercourse with her government 
has done nothing for Ireland is furnished by Mr. 
Trench, with no intention on his part of doing so. 
The reader who examines the list of Irish landlords 
in Thorn's Directory for the current year will find 
there this, on page 750: "Shirley, Evelyn Philip, 
26,386 acres; valuation, ^"20,744." The estate is 
Farney. It doubtless gives him an income of up- 
ward of a hundred thousand dollars annually. This 
estate was placed in Trench's hands forty years ago ; 
he recites its history. On another page it has been 
affirmed that if a lawyer follows up the record of a 
great estate in Ireland, he will discover that its pres- 
ent title was born in a confiscation. Mr. Shirley's 
estate is no exception. Trench asserts, with land- 
lord pride, that it was presented by Queen Elizabeth 
to her favorite, Essex. Of course Essex was an ab- 
sentee landlord. The queen had boldly confiscated 
it from the rightful owners, whose name was Mac- 
mahon, and Trench relates that they had the audacity 
to attempt to disturb those whom the new proprietor 
placed upon it. Finally, Essex allowed Macmahon 
to occupy it on condition of his paying annually as 
rent two hundred and fifty pounds — not at Farney, 
but in Dublin, the handsome earl not caring to go 
after his money. If there was any evidence on record 
that the earl spent money improving the estate, Mr. 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 201 

Trench would be pleased to reproduce it ; we must 
assume, in the absence of the evidence, that the im- 
provements were made by the tenants, and they so 
increased its value that when next the rent was raised 
it became fifteen hundred pounds annually; and a 
Macmahon had to pay it. This Macmahon was so 
industrious that a new set of tenants are soon found 
paying over two thousand pounds a year. When the 
third earl of Essex died he bequeathed the estate to 
his two sisters, one of whom married a Shirley, the 
ancestor of the present landlord. Soon the rent 
amounted to eight thousand pounds a year. Now 
the original estate, of which Farney is only a part, 
brings in forty thousand pounds a year, and it is 
perfectly reasonable to assume that the entire in- 
crease in its value was made by tenants whose labor, 
time and capital were constantly confiscated. True 
to the hereditary practice, the present landlord re- 
fused to make improvements which would have 
benefited the tenants as well as himself, and Mr. 
Trench was compelled to abandon his efforts to 
control either the tenants or the landlord, whose 
exactions exasperated the people at times into im- 
potent fury. 

The American reader, to whom famine and 
eviction are unknown, may well inquire whether 
such poverty, with famine and eviction, as was de- 
scribed by Doyle in 183 1 and by Sullivan, Mitchel, 
Trench and Sigerson in 1847, 1848, 1849 and 1850, 
occurred during the past two years. The simple truth 



202 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

is that the peasant-farmer in Ireland is no better off 
to-day than he was fifty years ago. 

Mr. James Redpath is well known to the people 
of the United States as an independent, alert and 
intrepid man. He bore a heroic part in the struggle 
to make ours a republic in fact as well as in name, 
and it would have been impossible twenty years ago 
to convince him that there was any other human 
being whose lot was so miserable as that of the 
black slave in the United States. Ill-health induced 
him to take a sea-voyage in the winter of 1879, and 
he went to Ireland to see if there was any truth in 
the alleged distress. Incredulous and prejudiced 
against the Land League, he determined to see and 
hear for himself. He spent the summer of 1880, 
and again that of 1 881, in Ireland. He wrote the 
results of his tours there ; and the following are con- 
densed extracts from his letters : 

" One day about three months ago I was riding in 
an Irish jaunting-car in the parish of Islaneady, in 
the county Mayo. My companion was the Rev. 
Thomas O'Malley ; he had been the parish priest of 
Islaneady for more than twenty years. It was one 
of my first rides in the country, and everything was 
new to me. As we drove out we met large numbers 
of the countrywomen — comely maidens, sturdy mat- 
rons, wrinkled grandmothers — trudging along with 
bare feet in the cold mud on their way to the market 
at Westport : nine women out of every ten go bare- 
footed in the rural districts of the West of Ireland. 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 203 

Here and there, on both sides of the road, I saw, as 
you see everywhere in the county Mayo, the ruins 
of little cabins that had once been the homes of a 
hardy and hard-working and hospitable peasantry. 

" I turned to Father O'Malley and asked him, 

" ' Have there been many evictions in your parish ?' 

" ' Yes,' said the old man ; ' when I was a young 
priest there were eighteen hundred families in this 
parish, but ' — his face grew sad and his voice quiver- 
ed with emotion as he added — ' there are only six 
hundred families now.' 

" ' Well,' I said, ' what has become of the missing 
twelve hundred families ?' 

" ' They were driven out,' he answered, ' by famine 
and the landlords.' 

" ' Famine and the landlords V 

" Now, if this answer had been made by one of 
the Irish land reformers — by Mr. Parnell, for ex- 
ample, or Michael Davitt — I should have regarded 
the phrase as an excellent ' bit ' of rhetorical art, as 
a skilful coupling of two evils not necessarily mates, 
and I should have smiled at the forced marriage and 
then thought no more about it. 

" But the words impressed me profoundly when 
they came from the lips of an old priest, a cadet of 
an ancient Irish family, a man of the most conserv- 
ative temperament, whose training and whose office 
might have been expected to intensify his natural 
bias in favor of existing institutions and established 
authority. For the Catholic Church is the most po- 



204 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

tent conservative force in our modern society. It 
teaches its adherents to render unto Caesar the things 
that are Caesar's, and it rarely arrays itself against 
the civil authority. 

" Yet I found that in Ireland, wherever there was 
famine, there the Catholic priest did not hesitate to 
declare both in private and in print that the primary 
causes of Irish destitution were the exactions of the 
landlords. 

" During my recent visit to Ireland I gave both 
my days and my nights to the study of the famine. 
I interviewed the representative managers of the 
duchess of Marlborough fund, the Mansion-House 
fund, the Philadelphia fund, the Herald fund, and the 
National Irish Land League fund. I interviewed 
Catholic priests and Protestant clergymen, British 
officials and American consuls, Irish journalists and 
Irish drummers, Irish lords and Irish peasants — 
everybody I met, everywhere, who knew anything 
about the famine from personal observation. I never 
had to tell where I came from, because I asked so 
many questions that nobody ever doubted for a 
single moment that I was what Father O'Farrell 
called me the other day — ' a pure unadulterated 
Yankee.' 

" I shall not call witnesses from the committees 
of the Land League, because they might be sus- 
pected of exaggerating the distress in order to dem- 
onstrate the evils of a government by landlords. 
I shall show the imperative need of the Irish Land 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 205 

League by the evidence of its enemies and the 
friends of the landlords. 

" From six hundred and ninety districts six hun- 
dred and ninety reports made to the Mansion-House 
demonstrate the appalling fact that there are 

In the Province of Leinster 28,000 

In the Province of Ulster 180,000 

In the Province of Munster 233,000 

In the Province of Connaught 422,000 

In all Ireland 863,000 

persons at this very hour whose strongest hope of 
seeing the next harvest-moon rise as they stand at 
their own cabin-doors rests, and almost solely rests, 
on the bounty of the stranger and of the exiles of 
Erin. I have not a shadow of a shade of doubt 
that there are to-day in Ireland one million of peo- 
ple hungry and in rags — and by and by I may show 
you why — but I can point out province by province, 
county by county and parish by parish where eight 
hundred and sixty-three thousand of them are pray- 
ing and begging and clamoring for a chance to live 
in the land of their birth. Eight hundred and sixty- 
three thousand ! Do you grasp this number ? If 
you were to sit twelve hours a day to see this gaunt 
army of hunger pass in review before you in single 
file, and one person was to pass every minute, do you 
know how long it would be before you saw the last 
man pass ? Three years and four months ! 

u Remember and note well that these statistics are 



206 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

not estimates. They are the returns, carefully ver- 
ified, of the actual numbers on the relief rolls, or 
of the numbers reported by the local committees 
as in real distress. 

" But I ought to say that I was not satisfied with 
the vast volume of documentary and vicarious ev- 
idence that I had accumulated. I personally visited 
several of the districts blighted by the famine, and 
with my own eyes saw the destitution of the peasant- 
ry, and with my own ears heard the sighs of their 
unhappy wives and children. They were the sad- 
dest days I ever passed on earth, for never before 
had I seen human misery so hopeless and unde- 
served and so profound. I went to Ireland because 
a crowd of calamities had overtaken me that made 
my own life a burden too heavy to be borne, but in 
the ghastly cabins of the Irish peasantry, without 
fuel, without blankets and without food ; among 
half-naked and blue-lipped children shivering from 
cold and crying from hunger; among women who 
were weeping because their little ones were starving; 
among men of a race to whom a fight is better than 
a feast, but whose faces now bore the famine's fear- 
ful stamp of terror, — in the West of Ireland I soon 
forgot every trouble of my own life in the dread 
presence of the great tidal-wave of sorrow that had 
overwhelmed an unhappy and unfortunate and inno- 
cent people. 

" The famine-line follows neither the division-lines 
of creeds nor the boundary-lines of provinces. It 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 207 

runs from north to south — from a little east of the 
city of Cork, in the South, to Londonderry in the 
North — and it divides Ireland into two nearly equal 
parts. The nearer the western coast, the hungrier 
the people. 

" The western half of Ireland — from Donegal to 
Cork — is mountainous and beautiful, but its climate 
is inclement. It is scourged by the Atlantic storms ; 
it is wet in summer and bleak in winter. The larger 
part of the soil is either barren and spewy bogs or 
stony and sterile hills. 

" The best lands in nearly every county have been 
leased to Scotch and English graziers ; for after the 
terrible famine of 1847 — when the Irish people stag- 
gered and fainted with hunger and fever into their 
graves by tens of thousands and by hundreds of 
thousands ; when the poor tenants, too far gone to 
have the strength to shout for food, faintly whisper- 
ed for the dear Lord's sake for a little bread — the 
landlords of the West answered these piteous moans 
by sending processes of ejectment to turn them out 
into the roadside or the poorhouse to die, and by 
hiring crowbar brigades to pull down the roof that 
still sheltered the gasping people. As fast as the 
homeless peasants died or were driven into exile 
their little farms were rented out to British graziers. 
The people who could not escape were forced to 
take the wettest bogs and driest hill-slopes. These 
swamps and slopes were absolutely worthless ; they 
could not raise enough to feed a snipe. By the pa- 



208 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

tient toil of the people they were redeemed. Sea- 
weed was brought on the backs of the farmers for 
miles to reclaim these lands. 

" The landlord did not spend one shilling to help 
the tenant. He did not build the cabin ; he did not 
fence the holding ; he did not drain the bog. {Tn the""" 
West of Ireland the landlord does nothing but take 
rent. I beg the landlord's pardon ; I want to be per- 
fectly just. The landlord does two things besides 
taking the rent : he makes the tenant pay the larger 
part of the taxes, and as fast as the farmer improves 
the land the landlord raises the rent. And when- 
ever, from any cause, the tenant fails to pay the 
rent, the landlord turns him out and confiscates his 
improvements. 

" The landlords charge so high a rent for these 
lands that even in the best of seasons the tenants 
can save nothing. To hide their own exactions 
from the execration of the human race, the land- 
lords and their parasites have added insult to injury 
by charging the woes of Ireland to the improvidence 
of the people. Stretched on the rack of the land- 
lord's avarice, one bad season brings serious distress 
to the tenant ; a second bad season takes away the 
helping hand of credit at the merchant's; and the 
third bad season beckons famine and fever to the 
cabin-door. 

"Now, the summer of 1879 was the third suc- 
cessive bad season. When it opened it found the 
people deeply in debt. Credit was stopped. But 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 209 

for the confidence of the shopkeepers in the honesty 
of the peasant, the distress would have come a year 
ago : it was stayed by the kind heart of the humble 
merchant. Therefore the landlords have charged the 
distress to the system of credit ! 

"There. was a heavy fall of rain all last summer. 
The turf was ruined. Two-thirds of the potato crop 
was lost, on an average of the crop of all Ireland ; 
but in many large districts of the West not a single 
sound potato was dug. One-half of the turnip crop 
perished. The cereal crop suffered, although not 
to so great an extent. There was a rot in sheep in 
some places, and in other places an epidemic among 
the pigs. The fisheries failed. The iron-mines in the 
South were closed. Everything in Ireland seemed to 
have conspired to invite a famine. 

" But the British and American farmers were also 
the innocent causes of intensifying Irish distress. 

" In Donegal, Mayo, Galway and the western 
islands the small holders for generations have never 
been able to raise enough from their little farms to 
pay their big rents. They go over every spring by 
tens of thousands to England and Scotland and hire 
out to the farmers for wages. They stay there till 
the crops are harvested. But the great American 
competition is lowering the prices of farm-produce 
in Great Britain and the prices of farm-stock, and 
therefore the English and Scotch farmers for two or 
three years past have not been able to pay the old 
wages to these Irish laborers. Last summer, instead 



210 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

of sending back wages to pay the rent, hosts of 
Irish farm-hands had to send for money to get 
back again. 

"These complex combinations of misfortune re- 
sulted in universal distress. Everywhere in the 
strictly agricultural regions of the West the farmers, 
and especially the small holders, suffered first, and 
then the distress spread out its ghoul-like wings 
until they overshadowed the shopkeepers, the ar- 
tisans, the fishermen, the miners and, more than all, 
the laborers, who had no land, but who had worked 
for the more comfortable class of farmers. 

"These malignant influences blighted every county 
in the West of Ireland, and these mournful facts are 
true of almost every parish in all that region. 

" Looking at the physical causes of the distress, 
every honest and intelligent spectator will say that 
they are cowards and libellers who assert that the 
victims of the famine are in any way responsible 
for it. 

" Looking at the exactions of the landlords, none 
but a blasphemer will pretend that the distress is an 
act of Providence. 

" Let us run rapidly over Ireland. We will begin 
with the least distressful province — the beautiful 
province of Leinster. ' Leinster is the garden of Ire- 
land. There is no finer country in the temperate 
zone. There is no natural reason why poverty 
should ever throw its blighting shadows athwart the 
green and fertile fields of Leinster. 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 213 

"There are resident landlords in the rural dis- 
tricts of Leinster; and wherever in Ireland the 
owners of the soil live on their own estates, the 
peasantry, as a rule, are more justly dealt with than 
when they are left to the tiger-mercy of the agent 
of the absentee. But it is not the fertile soil only, 
nor the presence of resident proprietors only, nor 
the proximity of markets only — nor is it these three 
causes jointly — that accounts for the absence of 
such a long procession of distress as the other prov- 
inces present. 

" In some of the fairest counties of Leinster evic- 
tion has done its perfect work. Instead of toiling 
peasants, you find fat bullocks ; instead of bright- 
eyed girls, you find bleating sheep. After the fam- 
ine of 1 847 the men were turned out and the beasts 
were turned in. The British government cheered 
this infamy, for Irishmen are rebels sometimes, but 
heifers are loyal always. There is less distress in 
the rural districts of Leinster because there are few- 
er people there. 

" In the twelve counties of Leinster there are 
38,000 persons in distress — in Dublin, 250; in Wex- 
ford, 870; in King's county, 1047; m Meath and in 
Westmeath, 1550 each; in Kildare, 1567; in Kil- 
kenny, 1979; in Carlow, 2000 ; in Louth, 3050; in 
Queen's county, 4743 ; in Wicklow, 5450; in Long- 
ford, 9557. 

" In Carlow, in Westmeath, in Louth and in one 
district of Queen's county the distress is expected to 



214 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

increase ; in Kildare and in King's county it is not 
expected to increase. 

" You see by this list how moderate the returns 
are — how strictly they are confined to famine or ex- 
ceptional distress, as distinguished from chronic or 
ordinary poverty — because there are thousands of 
very poor persons in the city of Dublin, and yet 
there are only two hundred and fifty reported as in 
distress in the entire county. They belong to the 
rural district of Glencullen. 

" Longford leads the list of distressed counties 
in Leinster. There are no resident proprietors in 
Longford. Up to the 1st of March not one of them 
had given a single shilling for the relief of the desti- 
tute on their estates. The same report comes from 
Kilkenny. 

" The distress in Leinster is among the fishermen 
and small farmers and laborers. In Wicklow the 
fishers are kept poor because the government refuses 
to build harbors for their protection. In Westmeath 
' the laboring class and the small farmers are in 
great distress.' That is the report of the local 
committee, and I can confirm it by my personal 
ob-servation. 

" The province of Leinster contains one-fourth of 
the population of Ireland, but it does not contain 
more than one-thirtieth part of the prevailing dis- 
tress. So I shall take you to one parish only — to 
Stradbally, in Queen's county. It is not included 
in the reports of the Mansion-House committee. 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 21$ 

" Dr. John Magee, P. P., of Stradbally, wrote to 
me quite recently: 

" ' In this parish — one of the most favorably circum- 
stanced in Leinster — such has been their misery that 
for the last three months I have been doling out 
charities t*o one hundred and twenty families. Some 
of them I found in a state of utter starvation — an 
entire day, sometimes, without a morsel of food in 
the cabin. But, most miserable of all and what 
makes the case so affecting, very many of our small 
farmers (whose pride would hide their poverty) are 
now reduced to the same plight, the rack-rent (or 
excessive rent) having robbed them of every avail- 
able salable chattel they possessed. I had missed 
for some time one of our farmers holding about 
thirty-five acres. On inquiry, I found that he was 
confined to his house for want of clothing, and that 
he had eaten his last potatoes and the only fowl left 
on the place. To add to his misery, the rack-warner 
had waited on him the day before to come in with 
his rent. In the past week I gave stealthily to one 
of our farmers — holding over sixty acres of land, and 
who used to have a stock of eighteen or twenty 
milch-cows — a bag of Indian meal to save his fam- 
ily from starvation. The man, with tears in his eyes, 
told me that " his children had not eaten a morsel 
for the last twenty-four hours ;" and I believed him. 
Of the two hundred and forty families in my parish, 
one-fifth of them are in the same miserable condition 
— without food, without stock, without seed for the 



2l6 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

land, without credit, and without any possible hope 
from the justice or the sympathy of the English gov- 
ernment.' 

" Father Magee is not only a good Irish priest, 
but a profound student of Irish history. Will you 
let me read to you what he wrote to me about the 
causes of Irish famines ? 

" ' If I were asked,' he wrote, ' Why is it that Ire- 
land is so poor, with abundance of foreign grain and 
food in our ports ? Whence this famine that alarms 
even the stranger ? my answer would be, " Speak as 
we may of short and scanty harvests, the real cause 
is landlords' exactions, which drain the land of 
money, and which leave nothing to buy corn. 
Landlord absolutism and unrestrained rack-rents 
have always been, and are at present, the bane 
and the curse of Ireland. If the harvest be good, 
landlordism luxuriates and abstracts all ; if scanty or 
bad, landlordism seizes on the rood or cattle for the 
rack-rent." 

" ' I have in my own parish,' he says, ' five or six 
landlords — not the worst type of their class — two of 
them of Cromwellian descent, a third an Elizabethan, 
all enjoying the confiscated estates of the O'Moores, 
O'Lalors and O'Kellys, whose sons are now the 
miserable tenants of these estates — tenants who are 
paying, or trying to pay, forty, eighty, and in some 
cases one hundred and twenty, per cent, over the gov- 
ernment valuation of the land ; tenants who are 
treated as slaves and starved as beggars. If these 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 2\>J 

tenants gainsay the will of the landlord, or even 
complain, they are victimized on the spot. This 
land system pays over, from the sweat and toil of 
our inhabitants, ninety million dollars yearly to six 
or seven thousand landlords who do nothing but 
hunt a fox or hunt the tenantry. 

" ' The [British] government, that upholds this 
cruel system, abstracts thirty-five millions more 
from the land in imperial taxation, while there is 
left for the food, clothing and subsistence of five 
millions of people not more than fifty million dol- 
lars, or about ten dollars per head, yearly. 

" * This is the system,' says Father Magee, ' that 
produces our periodical famines ; which shames and 
degrades us before Europe ; which presents us peri- 
odically before the world as mendicants, and beggars 
before the nations. . . . And will any one blame us, 
cost what it may, if we are resolved to get rid of a 
system that has so long enslaved our people ?' 

" It was in this province that I gained my first 
personal knowledge of the fierce celerity with which 
the Irish landlords in years of distress rally to the 
assistance — not of their tenants, but the famine. I 
went down from Dublin to attend an indignation- 
meeting over an eviction in the parish of Ballybrophy, 
near Knockaroo, in Queen's county. 

" As we drove from the railway-station I noticed 
that three men jumped into a jaunting-car and fol- 
lowed us. I asked my companion if he knew who 
they were. ' Oh yes,' he said ; ' it is a magistrate 



2l8 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

and two short-hand writers paid by the government. 
They follow us wherever we go, to get evidence of 
seditious language to try and convict us ; they have 
constabulary with loaded muskets at all our meet- 
ings : they think they can overawe me, but they only 
exasperate me.' It was Michael Davitt. 

" Sure enough, when we got to the meeting there 
was a platoon of armed constabulary at it. No one 
pretended that there was any risk of a riot at Bally- 
brophy, for everybody there belonged to the same 
party. Next week a party of Orangemen threatened 
in advance to break up a meeting of the Land League 
in a county in Ulster. Not a constable was sent 
there, and the Orange rioters were allowed to dis- 
perse the audience and shed the blood of peaceful 
citizens. 

" Why was this meeting called at Ballybrophy ? 
Malachi Kelly, a decent old man with a wife and 
five children, had been turned out of his house into 
the road by his landlord, a person of the name of 
Erasmus Dickson Barrows. Mr. Kelly had paid his 
rent without failing once for thirty consecutive years. 
All his life long he had borne the reputation of an 
honest and temperate and industrious man. 

" His rent at first was five hundred and thirty-five 
dollars a year. He made improvements at his own 
cost ; the rent was instantly raised to six hundred 
and forty dollars. The landlord solemnly promised 
not to raise the rent again, and to make some im- 
provements that were needed. Relying on this 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 2IQ. 

pledge, Mr. Kelly spent fifteen hundred dollars in 
erecting permanent buildings in 1873; the landlord 
instantly raised the rent again — this time to seven 
hundred and seventy-five dollars. In other words, 
he fined Mr. Kelly one hundred and ten dollars a 
year for the folly of believing a landlord's pledge 
and for the offence of increasing the value of his 
landlord's estate. Last season Mr. Kelly's crop was 
a total failure, and the old man could not pay the 
rent, for the first time in his life ; so he was turned 
out in his old age, homeless and penniless, and the 
buildings that he had erected at his own cost became 
the property of his landlord. 

" Michael Davitt made a speech on this eviction, 
and I did not notice that the loaded muskets of the 
constabulary overawed him. 

" I am a Protestant of Protestantism. I conciliate 
nobody, and I ask favors of no man ; but I hate with 
a hatred inextinguishable every form of oppression, 
and I shall strike at it in the future, as I have done 
in the past, without waiting to inquire its name or to 
look at its flag. 

" In the province of Ulster, on the first day of 
March last, the local committees of the Mansion- 
House, one hundred and thirty-one in number, re- 
ported that there were in distress, in eight counties, 
160,880 persons — in Antrim, 220; in Down, 800; in 
Armagh, 10,455; m Monaghan, 7447; in Cavan, 
34,709; in Fermanagh, 12,768; in Tyrone, 7447; in 
Donegal, 87,034. Fourteen of the Ulster commit- 



220 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

tees report that the distress is likely or certain to 
increase. The most moderate estimate, therefore, of 
the army of hunger in the province of Ulster, includ- 
ing the county of Londonderry, would put the figures 
at one hundred and eighty thousand. It is more prob- 
ably two hundred thousand. 

" Yet this vast aggregation of human misery exists 
in a province in which the Belfast manufactories em- 
ploy large numbers of boys and girls, and so to a 
considerable extent relieve the agricultural classes, 
both by sending back wages to the cabins in the 
country and by affording a home market for their 
produce. And in justice to the Catholic provinces 
let it be remembered that the reason why there are 
no manufactories in Connaught and Munster is be- 
cause the English Parliament for several generations 
by positive legislation prevented their establishment, 
and because, since these infamous laws were repealed, 
their disastrous results have been conserved by com- 
binations among the English manufacturers. 

" Listen to a report of how one landlord, ' a noble 
lord,' helped the distress on his own estates in the 
county Cavan. 

" It is the Rev. Father Joseph Flood who speaks : 
* In the midst of cries of distress around me, while 
Protestants and Catholics, here as elsewhere, are 
struggling to keep together the bodies and souls 
of this year's visitation, I was hurried off to witness 
the heartless eviction of five whole families — thirty 
souls in all — of ages varying from eighty years to 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 221 

two years. At twelve o'clock to-day, in the midst 
of a drenching rain, when every man's lips are busy 
discussing how relief can be carried to this home and 
that, an imposing spectacle presented itself through a 
quiet part of the parish of King's Court. A carriage 
containing Mr. Hussey, Jr., son of the agent of Lord 
Gormanston ; behind and before it about a dozen out- 
side cars, with a resident magistrate, an inspector of 
police, about forty of Her Majesty's force, the sheriff 
and some dozens of as rapacious-looking drivers and 
grippers as I ever laid my eyes upon. There is a 
dead silence at the halt before the first doomed door. 
That silence was broken by myself, craving to let the 
poor people in again after the vindication of the law. 
/""the sheriff formally asks, 

" ' " Have you the rent ?" 

" ' The trembling answer is, 

« < " My God ! how could I have the whole rent — 
and such a rent ! — on such a soil in such a year as 
this ?" 

" ' " Get out !" is the word, and right heartily the 
grippers set to work. On the dung-heap is flung 
the scanty furniture, bed and bedding. The door 
is nailed. The imposing army marches on to the 
next holding, till every house has been visited and 
every soul turned out. 

" ' At this moment there is a downpour of rain 
on that poor bed and bedding and on that miserable 
furniture, and an old man whose generations have 
passed their simple lives in that house is sitting on 



222 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

a stone outside with his head buried in his hands 
thinking of the eighty-three years gone by. f And 
are these tenants to blame ? No ! It is on the 
records of this parish that they were the most 
simple-minded, hard-working, honest and virtuous 
people in it.' 

"This is the sort of contribution that the land- 
lords have made to the distress in the province of 
Ulster. 

f" Let us now, in spirit, take the shoes from off 
our feet as we draw nigh the holy ground of Con- 
naught and Munster. There is nothing on this 
earth more sacred than human sorrow. Christianity 
itself has been called the worship of sorrow. If 
this definition be a true one, then the Holy Land 
of our day is the West of Ireland. Every sod there 
has been wet with human tears. The murmurs of 
every rippling brook there, from time out of mind, 
have been accompanied by an invisible chorus of 
sighs from breaking human hearts. Every breeze 
that has swept across her barren moors has carried 
with it to the summits of her bleak mountain-slopes 
(and I trust far beyond them) the groans and the 
prayers of a brave but a despairing people. The 
sun has never set on her sorrows excepting to give 
place to the pitying stars that have looked down on 
human woes that excel in number their own con- 
stellated hosts. 

" I have heard so much and I have seen so much 
of the sorrows of the West that when the memory 



r: 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 223 

of them rises up before me I stand appalled at the 
vision. [Again and again since I came back from 
Ireland I have tried to paint a picture of Western 
misery ; but again and again and as often as I have 
tried — even in the solitude of my chamber, where 
no human eye could see me — I have broken down, 
and I have wept like a woman. If I could put the 
picture into words, I could not utter the words, for 
I cannot look on human sorrow with the cold and 
aesthetic eye of an artist. To me a once-stalwart 
peasant shivering in rags and gaunt and hollow- 
voiced and staggering with hunger — to me he is not 
a mere picture of Irish life : to me he is a brother- to 
be helped ; to me he is a Christian prisoner to be 
rescued from the pitiless power of those infidel 
Saracens of the nineteenth century the Irish land- 
lords and the British government. 

" I know not where to begin nor what county to 
select in either of these unhappy provinces. 

" Dr. Canon Finn of Ballymote wrote to me that 
the priests in his parish tell him that the little chil- 
dren often come to school without having had a 
mouthful of breakfast to eat, and that vomiting and 
stomach sickness are common among them. 

" Why ? 

" ' I know whole families,' writes the canon, i that 
have to supplement what our committee gives by 
eating rotten potatoes which they dig out day by 
day.' 

" Father John O'Keene of Dramore West wrote to 



224 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

me that ' there are four hundred families in his parish 
dependent on the relief committees, and one hundred 
almost entirely in want of clothing and the children 
in a state of semi-nudity.' 

" Four hundred families ! Let us look at the mo- 
ther of just one of these four hundred families. 

" Listen to Father O'Keene : ' On Sunday last, as 
I was about going to church, a poor young woman 
prematurely aged by poverty came up and spoke to 
me. Being in a hurry, I said : 

" ' " I have no time to speak to you, Mrs. Calpin. 
Are you not on the relief list?" 

" ' " No, father," she said, " and we are starving." 

" ' Her appearance caused me to stop. She had 
no shoes, and her wretched clothing made her a 
picture of misery. 

" ' I asked her why her husband had not come to 
speak to me. 

" ' She said : 

" ' " He has not had a coat for the last two years, 
and, as this is Sunday, he did not wish to trouble 
Thomas Feeney for the loan of one, as he sometimes 
lends one to him." 

" ' " Have you any other clothes besides what I 
see on you?" 

" ' " Father, I am ashamed," was the reply ; " I have 
not even a stitch of underclothing." 

" ' " How many children have you ?" 

" ' " Four, father." 

" ' " What are their ages ?" 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 225 

" ' " The oldest a boy, eight years ; a girl, seven ; 
another, four; and a little one on the breast." 

" ' " Have they any clothes ?" 

" ' " No, father. You may remember that when you 
were passing last September you called into the house, 
and I had to put the children aside for their naked- 
ness." 

" ' " Have you any bedclothes ?" 

" ' " A couple of guano-bags." 

" ' " How could you live for the past week ?" 

" ' " I went to my brother, Martin MacGee of Far- 
relinfarrel, and he gave me a couple of porringers of 
Indian meal each day, from which I made Indian 
gruel. I gave my husband the biggest part, as he 
is working in the fields." 

" ' " Had you anything for the children ?" 

"'"Oh, father," she said, "the first question they 
put me in the morning is : ' Mother, have we any 
meal this day ?' If I say I have, they are happy ; if 
not, they are sad and begin to cry." 

" ' At these words she showed great emotion, and 
I could not remain unmoved. 

" ' This,' adds Father O'Keene, ' is one of the many 
cases I could adduce in proof of the misery of my 
people.' 

" Are the landlords doing nothing for these peo- 
ple ? Certainly. There are nine hundred families 
in the parish of Bruninadden, in the county of Cork. 
Canon McDermott is the priest there. Hear what 
he wrote to me : ' The lands are in part good, but 



226 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

the good lands are chiefly in the hands of landlords 
and graziers. You can travel miles over rich lands 
and meet only the herds or laborers of some absentee 
landlord. Thirty landlords own this parish ; twenty- 
seven of them are absentees. The three resident 
proprietors are poor and needy themselves. You can 
judge of the condition of the tenant-farmers and of 
their relations with their landlords by a statement of 
facts. There are in my parish two iron huts — one to 
protect the bailiff of an absentee landlord, the other 
to protect a resident landlord. Again, in a district 
containing one hundred and sixty families, eighty- 
nine processes of ejectment were ordered to be served 
by the landlords ; but in some cases the process- 
servers declined to act, and in others the processes 
were forcibly taken from them/ 

" It is not always a pastime to serve processes of 
ejectment on a starving and desperate peasantry. 

" The good canon continues : ' Allow me to state 
the condition of some of those on whom processes 
were to have been served. Pat Grady, of Lugmore, 
has fourteen children, thirteen of them living with 
him in a small hut. He holds about five acres of 
unreclaimed land, for which he pays at the rate of 
one pound twelve shillings (eight dollars) an acre. 
He owns neither a cow nor a calf. He has not a 
morsel to feed his children except the twenty-five 
pounds of Indian meal I dole out to him each week. 
To-day I saw his ticket from a pawnbroker for his 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 227 

very bedclothes. His children sleep on straw or on 
the bare floor.' 

" But the landlord wanted his rent, for all that. 

" I have entered hundreds of Irish cabins in dis- 
tricts where the relief is distributed. These cabins 
are more wretched than the cabins of the negroes 
were in the darkest days of slavery. The Irish peas- 
ant can neither dress as well, nor is he fed as well, 
as the Southern slave was fed and dressed and lodged. 
Donkeys and cows and pigs and hens live in the same 
wretched room with the family. Many of these cabins 
had not a single article of bedclothing except guano- 
sacks or potato-bags, and when the old folks had a 
blanket it was tattered and filthy. 

" I saw only one woman in all these cabins whose 
face did not look sad and care-racked, and she was 
dumb and idiotic. 

" The Irish have been described by novelists and 
travellers as a light-hearted and rollicking people, 
full of fun and quick in repartee, equally ready to 
dance or to fight. I did not find them so. I found 
them in the West of Ireland a sad and despondent 
people, careworn, broken-hearted and shrouded in 
gloom. Never once in the hundreds of cabins that 
I entered — never once, even — did I catch the thrill 
of a merry voice or the light of a joyous eye. Old 
men and boys, old women and girls, young men and 
maidens — all of them, without a solitary exception — 
were grave or haggard, and every household looked 
as if the plague of the first-born had smitten them 



228 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

that hour. Rachel weeping for her children would 
have passed unnoticed among these warm-hearted 
peasants, or, if she had been noticed, they would 
only have said, 'She is one of us.' A home with- 
out a child is cheerless enough, but here is a whole 
land without a child's laugh in it. Cabins full of 
children and no boisterous glee ! No need to tell 
these youngsters to be quiet : the famine has tamed 
their restless spirits, and they crouch around the bit 
of peat-fire without uttering a word. Often they do 
not look a second time at the stranger who comes 
into their desolate cabin. 

" My personal investigations proved that the mis- 
ery that my witnesses have outlined is not excep- 
tional, but representative ; that the Irish peasant is 
neither indolent nor improvident, but that he is the 
victim of laws without mercy that without mercy are 
enforced ; and my studies, furthermore, forced me to 
believe that the poverty I saw, and the sorrow and 
the wretchedness, are the predetermined results of 
the premeditated policy of the British government 
in Ireland to drive her people into exile. This, 
also, I believe and say — that Ireland does not suffer 
because of over-population, but because of over- 
spoliation ; because she has too many landlords and 
not enough land-owners. 

"Americans believe that it is England that rules 
Ireland, and that the Irish in Ireland enjoy the same 
rights that the English enjoy in England. The be- 
lief is an error. England delegates the most import- 



,7,1 







PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 23 1 

ant of all legislative powers — the power of taxation 
— to the absentee landlord, and he assigns the odious 
task of impoverishing the people to his irresponsible 
agents. 

" The Irish landlord has no more pity for his ten- 
ant than the shark has for the children of the sailor 
who falls between his jaws. If American landlords, 
even in law-abiding New England, were to act as the 
Irish landlords act, they would perish by the eager 
hands of vigilance committees. 

" From 1847 to 185 1 one million and a half of the 
Irish people perished from famine and the fevers that 
it spawned. This appalling crime has been demon- 
strated by a man whose love of Ireland no man ques- 
tioned, and whose knowledge of her history no man 
doubted — John Mitchel. These victims of landlord 
greed and British power were as deliberately put to 
death as if each one of them had been forced to 
mount the steps of a scaffold. And why ? To save 
a worse than feudal system of land tenure, for it is 
the feudal system stripped of every duty that feudal- 
ism recognized, the corpse that breeds pestilence 
after the spirit that gave protection has fled ; a feu- 
dal system that every Christian nation, excepting 
England only, has been compelled to abolish in the 
interests of civilization." 

Another witness is indeed unnecessary; but an 
eviction-scene which the bishop of Meath, Right 
Rev. Dr. Nulty, saw is so representative of all evic- 
tions that this record would not be complete without 

14 



232 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

it. It did not occur under Cromwell, it was not in 
1847; i ts date is 1871 : 

" In the very first year of our ministry as a mis- 
sionary-priest in this diocese we were an eye-witness 
of a cruel and inhuman eviction which even still 
makes our heart bleed as often as we allow ourselves 
to think of it. Seven hundred human beings were 
driven from their homes in one day and set adrift on 
the world to gratify the caprice of one who, before 
God and man, probably deserved less consideration 
than the last and least of them. And we remember 
well that there was not a single shilling of rent due 
on the estate at the time, except by one man ; and 
the character and acts of that man made it perfectly 
clear that the agent and himself quite understood 
each other. 

" The crowbar brigade, employed on the occasion 
to extinguish the hearths and demolish the homes of 
honest, industrious men, worked away with a will at 
their awful calling until evening. At length an inci- 
dent occurred that varied the monotony of the grim, 
ghastly ruin which they were spreading all around. 
They stopped suddenly, and recoiled panic-stricken 
with terror from two dwellings which they were di- 
rected to destroy with the rest. They had just 
learned that a frightful typhus-fever held those 
houses in its grasp, and had already brought pesti- 
lence and death to their inmates. They therefore 
supplicated the agent to spare these houses a little 
longer; but the agent was inexorable, and insisted 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 233 

that the houses should come down. The ingenuity 
with which he extricated himself from the difficulties 
of the situation was characteristic alike of the heart- 
lessness of the man and of the cruel necessities of 
the work in which he was engaged. He ordered a 
large winnowing-sheet to be secured over the beds 
in which the fever-victims lay— fortunately, they hap- 
pened to be perfectly delirious at the time — and then 
directed the houses to be unroofed cautiously and 
slowly ; because, he said, he very much disliked the 
bother and discomfort of a coroner's inquest. I ad- 
ministered the last sacrament of the Church to four 
of these fever-victims next day, and, save the above- 
mentioned winnowing-sheet, there was not then a 
roof nearer to me than the canopy of heaven. 
f* "The horrid scenes I then witnessed I must re- 
member all my life long. The wailing of women, 
the screams, the terror, the consternation of children, 
the speechless agony of honest, industrious men, 
wrung tears of grief from all who saw them. I 
saw the officers and men of a large police-force, 
who were obliged to attend on the occasion, cry 
like children at beholding the cruel sufferings of 
the very people whom they would be obliged to 
butcher had they offered the least resistance. The 
heavy rains that usually attend the autumnal equi- 
noxes descended in cold copious torrents through- 
out the night, and at once revealed to those houseless 
sufferers the awful realities of their condition. I vis- 
ited them next morning and rode from place to place, 



234 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

administering to them all the comfort and consolation 
I could. The appearance of men, women and chil- 
dren as they emerged from the ruins of their former 
homes — saturated with rain, blackened and besmeared 
with soot, shivering in every member from cold and 
misery — presented positively the most appalling spec- 
tacle I ever looked at. The landed proprietors in a*\ 
circle all around, and for many miles in every direc-/ 
tion, warned their tenantry, with threats of their direst ( 
vengeance, against the humanity of extending to any\ 
of them the hospitality of a single night's shelter. \ 
Many of these poor people were unable to emigrate / 
with their families, while at home the hand of every -f 
man was thus raised against them. They were driven 
from the land on which Providence had placed them, 
and, in the state of society surrounding them, every 
other walk of life was rigidly closed against them. 
What was the result? After battling in vain with \ 
privation and pestilence they at last graduated from 
the workhouse to the tomb, and in a little more than 
three years nearly a fourth of them lay quietly in / 
their graves. 

" The eviction which I have thus described, and of 
which I was an eye-witness, must not be considered 
an isolated exceptional event which could occur only 
in a remote locality where public opinion could not 
reach and expose it. The fact is quite the reverse. 
Every county, barony, poor-law union, and indeed 
every parish in the diocese, is perfectly familiar with 
evictions that are oftentimes surrounded by circum- 



PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 235 

stances and distinguished by traits of darker and 
more disgusting atrocity. Quite near the town in 
which I write [Mullingar], and in the parish in which 
I live, I lately passed through what might be charac- 
terized as a wilderness, in which, as far as the eye 
could reach, not a single human being or the vestige 
of a human habitation was anywhere discernible. It 
was only with great difficulty, and much uncertainty 
too, that I was able to distinguish the spot on which 
till lately stood one of the most respectable houses 
of this parish. A few miles farther on I fell in with 
the scene of another extensive clearance, in which 
the houses that had sheltered three hundred human 
beings were razed to the ground some few years 
ago. That same proprietor desolated, in an adjoin- 
ing parish, a densely-populated district by batches 
of so many families in each of a series of successive 
clearances. Seventeen families formed the first 
batch." 

The American reader will ask, Does not the new 
Land Act abolish such scenes for ever? It does 
not, as will be shown when we reach the terms of 
that measure. Was there not urgent need for the 
Land League? The proposition the League made 
to the government is this : That the government 
should buy out the landlords at a fair price, th«i 
sell the lands to the tenants at a fair price and give 
them thirty-five years to complete their payments, 
holding a first mortgage until the whole sum was 
paid, with interest. XThus the landlords, who gen- 



236 PECULIAR FEATURES OF LANDLORDISM. 

erally got the lands for nothing, and who have been 
in the enjoyment of princely incomes from them, 
would lose nothing by their sale ; the government 
would lose nothing; while the now poor and wretch- 
ed tenant would become a peasant proprietor. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE LANDLORDS SOW THE SEED OF THE 
LAND LEAGUE. 

IT was the Irish landlords who made the for- 
mation of the Land League inevitable. The 
Gladstone Land Act of 1870 was intended to re- 
strain them, but it was a law of excellent intentions 
and impotent performance. The promise it made to 
the tenant's wistful ear it broke to his sanguine hope. 
The biographer of Mr. Gladstone, George Barnett 
Smith, says very correctly : " It did not confiscate a 
single valuable right of the Irish landlord." One 
valuable right of the Irish landlord was to raise 
rents as often as he pleased ; another was to expel a 
tenant and his family whenever he pleased ; another 
was to confiscate, without compensation, the im- 
provements made by tenants at their own expense. 
These rights they exercised with uniform energy 
during the years 1877, 1878, 1879 and 1880. They 
succeeded in creating another famine, in which there 
would have been frightful loss of life had not the 
charity of the world poured into Ireland, chiefly 
from the United States, to save the stricken ten- 

237 



238 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

antry. It was not food that was sent, it was money. 
The money did not go to the tenantry or do them 
any permanent good ; it went to the landlords : it 
was paid to them for food for the tenants. The 
food had been produced by the tenants, but they 
had given it to the landlords for the rent of their 
little farms. They had nothing left for themselves 
but the potato, and the potato crop failed. 

It was the free exercise of their legal rights by 
the landlords during these three years which re- 
sulted in the formation of the Land League. The 
manner in which the rights of the landlords were 
exercised is most graphically described in a series 
of episodes which are herewith presented. The 
newspapers of April 3, 1878, contained the fol- 
lowing : 

" On the 2d inst. a dreadful event occurred in a 
remote part of the North of Ireland which has at- 
tracted the attention of the civilized world. On that 
morning an old and haughty nobleman, the earl of 
Leitrim, accompanied by his clerk, left his residence 
at Milford to drive to Derry, where he was to meet 
his solicitor and settle the process of eviction of 
eighty-nine tenant-farmers and laborers on his estates 
who were under notice to quit. The earl was armed : 
he always carried arms. On the road lay men driven 
to desperation by the earl's grinding cruelty. When 
he had arrived opposite an empty cottage from which 
he had recently evicted a poor widow, the men sprang 
forward and stopped the carriage. A terrible strug- 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 239 

gle ensued, as proved by the marks ; but the desperate 
assailants were the victors. The earl was shot through 
the heart ; his arms were broken, his skull shattered 
and his bleeding body flung into the roadside ditch, 
where it was found. The clerk and driver were also 
shot dead. The earl's valet was driving about a mile 
behind, and on coming up found his master and the 
clerk dead on the road ; life was still in the driver. 
The assassins meanwhile escaped in a boat across 
Mulroy Bay. The valet drove back to Milford and 
alarmed the police, who, coming to the place, found 
the driver alive, but unconscious. He died shortly 
afterward. The London Times' Editorial says : ' The 
news of the murder of the earl of Leitrim has struck 
this country with as much pain and amazement as an 
unprovoked declaration of war.' 

" The earl of Leitrim was well known as a landlord 
whose ideas of the rights of property prompted him 
to stretch the powers given him by the law to the 
utmost limit, and who was therefore extremely un- 
popular with his tenantry and with the small-farmer 
class generally. For over twenty-five years he had 
been consolidating farms, evicting tenants and turn- 
ing his lands into immense grass-farms. He owned 
immense tracts of land in the counties of Donegal, 
Leitrim and Derry, as well as a small estate in Kil- 
dare, and probably evicted more tenants in his life- 
time than any man in Ireland. Hundreds of sturdy 
Presbyterian farmers now settled in Ohio, Indiana 
and Illinois, as well as Catholics, were forced to give 



240 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

up their homes in Donegal and emigrate. It was his 
habit to act as his own bailiff, and on horseback, 
alone and armed to the teeth, to carry out those pro- 
cesses of law which even under the severest necessity- 
are so painful to a tender nature. His tenantry in 
Leitrim and Galway bore with his savage freaks with 
the greatest forbearance, believing him to be irrespon- 
sible for many of his acts. But to Derry, where this 
murder was committed, he was comparatively a stran- 
ger, his property there being very small ; and it will 
doubtless be found he has committed some terrible 
act of tyranny to provoke such a crime in a region 
in which agrarian outrage has hitherto been wholly 
unknown. It is told of him that his favorite phrase 
in dismissing any appeal made to him was to bid the 
applicant ' Go to hell or to America !' 

" On more than one occasion, also, he appeared at 
the local petty sessions in cases which aroused con- 
siderable popular indignation and gained him a great 
deal of newspaper notoriety. Many of his tenantry 
live on the rocky coast of the Atlantic, where the soil 
is very poor, and eke out a miserable existence, part- 
ly by fishing, partly by gathering kelp on the sea- 
shore, which is sold for manufacturing purposes. 
The right to gather this kelp had been exercised 
from time immemorial by the tenantry, but some 
years ago Lord Leitrim and a few other landlords 
claimed the kelp as the property of the landlord, and 
in cases where he found them gathering it had them 
arrested for theft. The irritation caused by these 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 24 1 

petty prosecutions was very deep, and extended over 
many parts of Ireland not immediately affected by the 
litigation. His father had been a mild landlord and 
a very popular man, and great expectations were 
formed of the son when, in 1854, he succeeded to 
the title and estates. The family seats are at Lough 
Rynn, Dromod, County Donegal, and Killadoon, 
Celbridge, County Kildare. The family originally 
obtained from James I. large tracts of confiscated 
land, and the earl who has just been murdered added 
largely to his estates by purchase. The earl was un- 
married. 

" The earl of Leitrim was possessed of vast estates 
in the counties of Londonderry, Sligo, Donegal and 
Leitrim. The town of Lifford in the first-named, 
and the towns of Manorhamilton and Mohill in the 
last-named, county were his property. He never em- 
ployed an agent to collect the rents of his immense 
possessions, but managed all himself with the assist- 
ance of the unfortunate clerk who shared his tragic 
fate. When his tenants went to pay their rents to 
him, they approached him with fear and trembling, 
as he made it a rule to treat them like dogs. No 
kind or encouraging word ever escaped his lips to 
the poor struggling slaves that contributed his prince- 
ly income. If a poor tenant had not the full amount 
of his rent on the appointed day for collecting it, and 
asked his hard taskmaster for a few days to make up 
the remainder, he would not grant him an hour, but 
would immediately hand him over to his lawyer, who 



242 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

would have his effects seized upon by the bailiffs. 
Many a poor man, with his wife and children, he 
drove from the house which their industry had built, 
and from the farm which their toil had cultivated and 
reclaimed from a barren morass to a fertile plain. 
There never has been six months since the passing 
of the Irish Land Act of 1 870 without Lord Leitrim's 
name appearing more than once in the law-courts as 
the plaintiff in ejectment cases. He made several 
futile attempts in the House of Lords to nullify the 
act. He said upon one of these occasions : ' The 
Land Act of Mr. Gladstone has confiscated my prop- 
erty.' Some years ago. a steward of his named Wil- 
son was shot at in the county Donegal and maimed 
so badly that he is a cripple for life. Wilson had 
been engaged in putting some of His Lordship's 
tyrannical evictions into execution when he was fired 
at. The seat at Lough Rynn was the deceased no- 
bleman's favorite place of residence. The house — or 
castle, as it is called — is built upon an island in Lough 
Rynn, and the communication with the main-land is 
by a drawbridge. He had the island fortified and 
defended with cannon, making it look more like the 
stronghold of a feudal baron of the Middle Ages than 
the residence of a nobleman of the latter part of the 
nineteenth century." 

Rewards were offered for the apprehension of the 
assassins, and several men were arrested, tried and 
acquitted, there being no evidence connecting them 
with the deed. ^** 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 243 

It transpired, after ample investigation, that the 
death of the earl was not due to agrarian causes. 
He had baser passions than avarice and malignity : 
he was bestial as well as brutal, and had invaded 
many humble and virtuous families. The brother 
of one of his victims, a young man who had been 
driven from his native land and was toiling in the 
United States, learning of his sister's dishonor, took 
ship, waited for his opportunity, and returned to his 
exile. 

During the previous winter the Freeman's Journal 
of Dublin sent a correspondent to the Galtee Moun- 
tains to investigate rumors of famine and evictions. 
The following is his report : 

" Mitchelstown, Christmas Eve. — Mr. Patten 
Smith Bridge told Lord Chief-Justice May that the 
whole five hundred and seventeen tenants who pop- 
ulate the twenty-two thousand acres of mountain and 
lowland under his sway had already settled except 
forty-seven, and he had reason to believe that they 
would be ' settled ' when he went home. There was 
laughter in court at this. I do not know whether it 
was intended for grim humor, but the settlement has 
taken the form of a sheaf of processes of ejectment for 
the January sessions in Clonmel. Mr. Bridge has left 
the Galtees for the Christmas holidays, and, however 
it may have been in the castle, it must be owned that 
in the cabins singled out for the process-server's vis- 
its, as well as in those which are spared for another 
sessions, the season of Christmas peace and pleasure 



244 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

has little meaning around the Galtees. The exact 
number of processes served I have yet to cast up 
one by one as I visit the holdings, but it is certain 
that a selection of the recalcitrants has been made, 
and that a large section of those who did not, and 
declare they cannot, accept the revaluation have been 
respited, for reasons quite beyond their own compre- 
hension. The question then comes to be once more 
of cruel urgency, Is this whole wail over the Galtee 
tenantry a gigantic conspiracy against truth, or is it 
the cry of honest industry driven to despair ? Has 
public sympathy been trifled with, or has it only been 
half aroused ? Have we here a cunning and secre- 
tive peasantry, with rags on their backs and gold in 
the thatch, striving to shelter themselves by a parade 
of mendicancy and filth from paying the honest value 
of their holdings, or are they really a race of humble 
toilers whose sweat and substance has wrung — alas ! 
not even bread, but — sustenance from the barren 
bosom of mountains and fens; who have waged a 
lifelong battle for existence against rocks and hea- 
ther, against a subsoil of sandy mud, against Nature 
in her stubbornest and most grudging mood; and 
who to-day find themselves face to face with strangers 
who have appropriated and trafficked in their im- 
provements, and sentenced them to rents which will, 
in due process of law, chase them from the fields they 
have created ? Is their case, in fact, a libel upon a 
good landlord and a conscientious agent, or is it a 
damning proof that under the aegis of the Land Act 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 245 

Irish tenants still owe it to the mercy of their mas- 
ters that they are not stripped of all that a life's in- 
dustry has laid up for their declining days, and sent 
upon the world with only the consolation of a legal 
viaticum ? It will be the business of these letters to 
make some small contribution of evidence upon this 
head, such as a person quite severed from the dis- 
pute, who uses his eyes and ears cautiously and 
frankly describes his experiences, may glean from 
careful investigation on the spot. There is no dis- 
guising the diffidence with which I commence the 
task. I do not for a moment pretend to review the 
revaluation further than the facts, when brought to- 
gether, may affect it ; and even an inquiry into the 
actual condition of a community spread over a tract 
of wild hills some thirty miles round — where there 
are so many diversities in the quality of soil and stock 
and habitations and so many exaggerations on both 
sides to be discounted — is beset with difficulties, the 
more especially that, as will be seen in the sequel, Mr. 
Bridge's explanations of what I may see are denied 
one. The dread that any inaccurate statement or in- 
cautious word of mine may be twisted to the disad- 
vantage of creatures whom I have seen bowed to the 
verge of despair weighs even more heavily than the 
consciousness that every sentence is written under the 
sword of a capricious law. My plan is, however, a 
humble one. It is to visit personally not only the 
doomed homesteads, but as large a proportion as pos- 
sible of all others lying in my track over the estate, 



246 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

townland by townland ; to describe the peasants' 
homes and mode of life ; to satisfy myself, as far as 
a layman may, of the nature and value of their crops ; 
to see their stock for myself, and see what quality of 
land is this for which a few shillings an acre is a rack- 
rent. The facts thus collected I shall first embody 
in as plain and succinct a narrative as may be. Af- 
terward I shall state the impressions left upon my 
own mind, leaving it to the judgment of sober pub- 
lic opinion to say whether they shall have been jus- 
tified by dry facts. 

" The townland of Skeheenarinka extends from 
the little village-cross of that name over the crest of 
a bare hump of mountain rising to a height that must 
be quite two thousand feet above the sea-level, con- 
sidering that Galteemore, which rises just behind and 
does not greatly overtop it, is three thousand and 
twelve. Neither of the peaks looks nearly so high 
from the level of the adjoining village. On the 
southern slope, where the sun most rests, the face 
of the hill is scored with great stone fences, marking 
out, terrace above terrace, the patches of reclaimed 
land, until they merge in an untamable belt of hea- 
ther not a stone's-throw from the top. I saw it on 
Sunday at its best, when scarcely a breeze stirred 
below and it was lighted by a sun of very unusual 
brilliancy for the winter solstice — when, too, the 
houses and the people were in their Sunday trim 
and the cattle basking in unwonted warmth. My 
visit was made, I need scarcely say, without the 



1 




Mi 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 249 

smallest previous notice. It will be readily under- 
stood, also, that, even if a perfect stranger could have 
threaded his way alone through a maze of mountain- 
borheens, he could not have penetrated for a moment 
the suspicious reticence natural to people under the 
pressure of heavy calamity without the passport of a 
familiar face. 

" I was happy enough in this respect to have ob- 
tained the guidance of the Very Rev. Dr. Delany, 
P. P., of Ballyporeen. His wide parish embraces 
most of the Buckley estates, and his great heart 
all their misery. Many a time during the day, as 
he struck a faint track across some remote glen or 
greeted some astonished mountaineer with a remind- 
er that he had not been to mass that day, his cheery 
smile, his gentle reproof, his word of comfort, his 
complete knowledge of everybody's little troubles, 
and the whole-souled confidence with which his in- 
terest was repaid, recalled the best that I had ever 
heard or read of the relations of an Irish priest with 
his people. The dogs in remote highland cabins 
knew him, while they barked at me. ' Will I tell 
him, dochtor?' asked one old fellow whom I was 
questioning about his relations with Mr. Bridge. 
And when the approval was smilingly given, he 
who had been taciturn as Jules Verne's Phineas 
Fogg grew as voluble as the small dressmaker in 
Little Dorrit. 

" At the foot of the mountain, where the path 
begins to be steep, we entered a thatched cabin by 



15 



250 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

the roadside, in front of which, as is usual with cot- 
tiers of the more wretched class, a foul pit of liquid 
manure was smoking. A man with his head between 
his hands was bent over the fire, and a few children 
stuck in the chimney-corner. The man started to 
his feet with a guilty look as the priest entered ; he 
was tall and strong-limbed, but had a cowed and 
haggard face. ' You weren't at mass this morning, 
Mick.' The man turned up his broken shoes, which 
had not, indeed, troubled shoemaker or shoeblack 
for many a day ; he had no coat, a flannel waistcoat 
and a brown jerry hat, and his shirt was not clean, 
though it was Sunday. Let me say here that in 
at least half a dozen other instances during the day 
we came across similar tenants with similar excuses ; 
and I do not think it was home attractions that kept 
those men in those noisome dens poring over the 
fire while the sun was shining and their neighbors 
going to mass. This was Michael Dwyer, and he 
had one of the processes of ejectment behind the 
dresser. ' It is the only Christmas-box we got yet, 
God help us !' said an old man, later in the day, who 
had been similarly served. A pot was boiling on the 
fire. It contained potatoes, the Sunday dinner of the 
family, ten of them all told. I took up some of the 
potatoes lying in a heap in the corner; they were 
many of them rotten, all of them wet and miserably 
small. Several of them I could bruise into pulp be- 
tween my fingers. And these were grown on low 
lands, in a field that looked as rich as the best of its 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 25 1 

neighbors. Potatoes have been bad everywhere this 
year; but these are not like any other potatoes I 
ever saw, except those picked out as refuse for the 
pigs in more favored spots. I have not yet seen in 
Skeheenarinka a single potato as large as an orange. 
" The cabin forms but one chamber, in which the 
whole family of ten are somehow accommodated by 
night. There were two bedsteads ; what the other 
arrangements are I dare not guess. This man's hold- 
ing is measured at four acres one rod, of which the 
old rent was £1 2s. 4d. and the new £\ 15 s. His 
own belief (which, of course, goes for what it is 
worth) is that the four acres include large patches 
which were taken from him to be attached to the 
schoolhouse. I only mention it as one of several 
cases in which the tenants profess themselves satisfied 
that a new survey would show them to be charged 
(not, of course, wilfully) with more land than they 
occupy. Dwyer states he twice offered Mr. Bridge 
the increased rent in full, and it would not be taken 
unless he signed an agreement as tenant from year 
to year. He was employed as quarryman by Mr. 
Bridge up to the time of these troubles, and he states 
that he was not only then disemployed, but that 
another tenant — John Jackson — had refused to em- 
ploy him, alleging instructions which I cannot, with- 
out more authority, give currency to. His whole 
tillage this year was one acre of potatoes, and of 
these not six baskets were left on Sunday. His 
whole stock is, in his own words, ' one old cow that 



252 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

my wife bought for twenty-five shillings/ I saw the 
old cow grazing in the best field in solitary majesty, 
and, though she was decidedly a bargain at the money, 
I doubt whether she would bring double the price 
this moment in any market in Munster. Cheek by 
jowl with this grassy field, lying flat beside it, sep- 
arated only by a fence, lay a tract of virgin moor 
covered with stunted heather and interspaces of 
utterly barren sand, with here and there a tuft of 
yellowish grass — a not inapt picture, even in quite 
civilized latitudes, of what the land was and what 
the patient dint of industry had made it. This, then, 
being the sum of Dwyer's ways and means, it only 
remained for him to show that he is twenty-one 
pounds indebted to the bank to convince me that, 
assuming his figures to be correct, the farm would 
not, as he himself put it, give a meal of yellow stir- 
about to ten Christians, only that he ekes out his 
means by doing jobs as road-contractor. 

" A pair of horses well skilled in mountain-climb- 
ing awaited us on the borheen outside, for the owner 
of the post-car had made a special clause the pre- 
vious day against trusting his vehicle into the by- 
roads. For a couple of hundred feet we ascended a 
rough but fairly passable mountain-path some eight 
feet wide. Thence to the top it grew more and more 
contracted and jagged, as if the mountain-streams 
had in winter coursed down the centre and torn a 
channel for themselves, and very quickly the horses 
had to pick their steps in single file. Our second 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 253 

visit was to the house of Patrick Burke, about the 
level of Galtee Castle, which lay in its body-guard 
of woods a little to our left. Burke's old rent for a 
farm that he believes to be about sixteen acres was 
£4. 1 8s. yd. : it has been raised to £S. There has 
been no movement whatever toward a settlement 
since £he trial ; yet, to his amazement, no process 
of ejectment has been served upon him. He was at 
mass when we called. His wife appeared as wretched 
as if the process had already come. The cabin, poor 
as it was, had the earthen floor neatly swept and the 
dresser of blue delft shining. A streak of green slime 
came down the wall where the rain trickled down 
and collected in a hole in the floor, out of which it 
had to be baled with a cup ; ' and if you scrubbed it 
three times a day, you could not keep the floor dry 
under you.' The five members of the family sleep 
in two beds in the bedroom, whose poverty she 
shrank from exposing, but stated they had to put 
a sop of straw under their feet to keep the floor dry. 
"This class of accommodation — which may be 
taken as a fair average of the mountain-cabins, ex- 
cept that I saw only three others in which the rain 
penetrated the dwelling-house to any appreciable ex- 
tent — is what I have generally found in the cabins of 
the poorest sort of laborers elsewhere, neither better 
nor worse, but the den in which three people are 
huddled together in the adjoining cow-house is an 
outrage upon civilization. I had to stoop on enter- 
ing its crazy door, and as soon as I could make out 



254 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

anything in the gloom (for it is neither lighted by 
window nor ventilated by chimney) I discovered that 
I stood up to my ankles in a fcetid pool of rain-water 
mixed with the droppings of cattle. Propped up on 
wattles in a corner* of this stifling den was a filthy 
bag of straw littered with some foul rags and a tat- 
tered coverlid, and here I was gravely, but with man- 
ifest shame, assured that a man, with his wife and 
daughter, sleeps nightly, while the cow lies down in 
the sodden manure beside them ! 

" I met this wretched wife (whose clothing by day 
was all but as scanty as by night) coming down the 
mountain barefooted as we were leaving. She was 
radiant with thankfulness. She was after begging a 
mess of Indian meal from a neighbor for the Sunday 
banquet of herself, her husband and daughter, and she 
had it rolled up in her red cotton handkerchief. And 
she thanked God more fervently, I am afraid, than 
'most of us do for merry Christmas dinners. But 
she had another cause of joy : she held out triumph- 
antly to the Rev. Dr. Delany an American letter she 
had just received, with an enclosure of ^"i from her 
daughter in distant New Haven, Connecticut. 

" But to return to her landlady, Mrs. Burke, who 
was herself without a dress and only wore torn blue 
flannel petticoats. Her own blanket is pledged for 
7s. 4 When we were married the poor man's coat 
was in pawn, and I had to pledge one of my own 
dresses that I got in service to release it for the wed- 
ding ; but, sure, it went again, and we never saw the 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 255 

sight of it since. He got a present of a coat six 
years ago from a neighboring man, and there it is 
to this day. And, as God is my judge,' she cried, 
vehemently, ' I never saw that man drunk !' 

" I went out upon the farm, and saw it dug in sev- 
eral places. It really looked one of the best hold- 
ings on the mountain at that elevation. Yet even in 
the lowest parts there was a tract of wet rea, and the 
upper border was still thick with stones and heath. 
Two large fields were red with potatoes, and I counted 
six pits. One of the fields, said Mrs. Burke, was sub- 
let as a garden for £1 a year. In his affidavit her 
husband swore he would not get £5 for the grazing 
of his whole farm. I drove the spade some eight 
inches into the upper potato-field ; after two efforts 
I brought up about four inches of dark soil, beneath 
which there was a miserable compost of wet sand 
perfectly incapable of secreting the moisture that 
trickles down eternally from the heights. At an- 
other trial I broke — spade, not ground. The upper 
part of this field was still dotted with boulders and 
scrubby patches returning to or never wholly recov- 
ered from wilderness, and this season's crop of stones 
(the only bounteous crop on Skeheenarinka) lay thick 
around. They never, since the famine years, had 
enough potatoes to carry them through the year, 
said Mrs. Burke, and she would be very proud if 
they held during the winter this season. They sowed 
five barrels of oats, for the seed of which they paid 
£4 1 os. ; upon this and other crops they put two 



256 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

bags of superphosphate, at 21s. the bag. They paid 
7s. a day, with diet, for ploughing and harrowing (for 
only two farmers on the mountain whom I met had 
either a horse or a plough); they paid a half-sov- 
ereign for mowing, and she showed me the note from 
Mr. Sam Burke of Cahir, to whom her husband sold 
all but five barrels of the oats for £6 is. 6d. Three 
small cocks of oaten straw, however, remain, as cat- 
tle-food. They tried quarter of an acre of turnips. 
' We could not get a mess for the cow out of them,' 
was Mrs. Burke's summary of the result. 

" The stock transactions are more extraordinary 
still. There is a cow, a heifer, ' an old sheep that I 
offered yesterday for half a sovereign,' a lamb and a 
goat. Her husband bought a cow on May 23 for 
£\$ I os. on credit, and had to sell her again for £S 
when his creditors clamored for payment. The pres- 
ent cow was bought in Mitchelstown on January 10, 
two years ago, for £g 17s. 6d., of which £4 is still 
due. All this is, of course, more ex-partc statement, 
as is the assertion that a debt 6f £60 is hanging over 
their cabin — that ' they were always living on credit, 
but there is no credit to be had now since this man 
came down on us.' Bills in the bank and private 
bills were shown me, but perhaps it is of somewhat 
more importance that when I questioned the husband 
some hours later, in a distant part of the townland, 
his answers tallied almost exactly with his wife's, save 
that he mentioned two sheep where she had only 
mentioned one. Burke brought forward at the same 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 2$g 

time a man who said he had been his security for the 
price of one of the cattle, and said he had to give 
the cows bran every day in the year, or they would 
run dry. When questioned as to the cost of the 
bran, he said he did not know how much a hundred- 
weight it was, as he got it ' on time,' but he made the 
very questionable statement that his cattle used half 
a hundredweight per week — say 3s. 6d. worth. ' How 
much money have you in bank now ?' — ' God help 
me, I have plenty of it to pay there !' was the im- 
mediate response. 

" One word more of Mrs. Burke. I spoke of 
Christmas. She pointed to a neck of mutton, about 
three pounds of it, that hung over the fireplace. This 
was to be the Christmas dinner of the family. ' 'Tis 
only four or five times in the year we get that same, 
and then 'tis only a pig's heart or a bone of pork that 
we could get cheap for a festival.' 

"At the other side of the borheen lives one of the 
1 settled ' tenants, the most wretched I had met yet. 
This is the woman, Johanna Fitzgerald, whose hus- 
band has gone to England as a laborer to earn bread 
for her four children. Mrs. Fitzgerald had not been 
seen at the chapel that morning, but her bare feet 
and coarse petticoat made a pretty eloquent apology. 
The children, who played about the door, had clean 
faces and clean rags, and the earthen floor was new- 
ly swept. A mess of Indian meal was in the pot for 
dinner. The family, of course, slept in one room ; 
and a man and wife, who are lodged in consideration 



260 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

of help on the farm, stretched by night on the floor 
inside the doorway. Except a few blue plates the 
dresser was stocked only with marmalade pots, 
whose contents were never emptied on the Galtees. 
Mrs. Fitzgerald said she had not heard from her 
husband these five weeks, and a shilling was all the 
money she had in the world. Her rent was raised 
from £2 1 os. 4d. to £4 4s. Her stock of potatoes 
was out this month past, ' except a handful of seed,' 
and from this to August yellow stirabout must be 
bought on credit. Her other tillage was half an acre 
of oats, which cost her £1 for seed, 7s. for labor, and 
I os. for a hundredweight of superphosphate (which 
she has not paid for yet). The whole crop was sold 
to James Fitzgerald, a neighbor, for £2, straw and 
all. Two geese and some hens made the total of 
her livestock. It was pitiful to see the open-mouth- 
ed surprise with which a woman supposed to be the 
mistress of some twenty acres gloated over the couple 
of pieces of small silver given to the children, the 
eagerness with which she pounced upon them, and 
the extravagant thanks with which she repaid them. 
" An ascent of ten minutes more brought us to a 
point at which we had to dismount and toil across a 
rocky track, while the horses were led by an easier 
path higher up the mountain. We were upon the 
farm of Darby Mahony, and our way lay across a 
stony field upon which the process of reclamation 
had commenced. Long rows of tough scraws delved 
out of the heather lay with the heath turned down- 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 26 1 

ward for burning, and the best side uppermost. Any- 
thing like soil was not three inches deep ; patches of 
verdure, however, appeared elsewhere in the field. 
Great heaps of sandstone were collected in the cen- 
tre, which had been dug out with crowbars, and were 
waiting to be smashed with a sledge-hammer pre- 
vious to either being piled on the fences or the big- 
gest of them buried underground. All the fences 
on this part of the mountain are built stouter than 
Roscommon stone walls, with the boulders dug out 
of the fields. ' Sure, we would not mind,' said Darby 
Mahony, ' if they let us alone ; but we have no sort 
of spirit to root a stone or put on a bit of thatch, 
owing to this man always promising to turn us out' 
His son is a powerfully-built young man — a patient 
and hard-working drudge, I can easily believe — but 
dulled and broken-spirited as I have seen few young 
men at his age. 

" Mahony has been served with a process of eject- 
ment. His rent was raised from £2 to £4., and he 
says, ' If I was obliged to go into the poorhouse, I 
could not pay it' So strongly persuaded is he that 
the measurement of 16a. ir. 27p. is double the ex- 
tent of his actual holding that, according to his own 
statement, he waited on Mr. Bridge twice with an 
offer to pay the expense of a survey himself if he 
should turn out to be wrong, Mr. Bridge paying the 
expense in the other event ; the answer was that no 
credit would be allowed for a survey, and none was 
made. The bulk of his farm is semi-reclaimed pas- 



262 THE SEED OE THE LAND LEAGUE. 

ture, but the rest melts into the unbroken mass of 
rock and heather which crowns the mountains. 
' What's there is but little,' said the tenant, ' but 
whatever is there we made it.' — ' I am old enough 
to recollect,' said another old fellow, who had been 
to the metropolis during the late trial, ' when you 
might as well graze a cow down the middle of Sack- 
ville street as turn her loose on that mountain.' 

" Mahony tilled altogether two acres this season : 
so his statement runs. He paid £i for seed-oats for 
half an acre, and 7s. for the plough. Yet he never 
threshed a grain, and a swathe which he pulled out 
of a stack showed the ears had never filled, while the 
straw was scarcely a foot long at its best. His live- 
stock is made up of two cows and a stripper, two 
yearlings, a donkey, a sow, with eleven bonnives, and 
one sheep ( nearly as old as himself.' I saw this gaunt 
and ragged bellwether toddling among the stones, 
and, making the usual allowance for exaggerated 
language, it was a miserable mountaineer. Mahonv 
says he gets but two and a half pounds of wool off 
her yearly, and that these are expended in knitting 
stockings. The cattle are average mountain-cattle, 
and an affidavit made by Mahony' s son states that a 
firkin and a half of butter per dairy-cow is their ut- 
most produce, with constant hand-feeding. 

" The cabin and its appointments are of the aver- 
age poverty and cleanliness. The out-office is tot- 
tering and covered with rotten thatch, through which 
the green trail of the water runs down the walls — a 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 263 

cosey shelter for dairy-cattle during the week or fort- 
night yearly when the farm is snowed up. 

" The Rev. Dr. Delany rallied the old fellow on a 
congenial topic when he pointed to the distant Com- 
meragh Mountains and said, ' Darby, the O'Mahonys 
were not always on the top of Skeheenarinka.' But, 
proud as the little old man is of his sept and its 
glories, he was not to be roused; he shook his head 
heedlessly, and pulled out a notice of a bill in the 
bank for £6, to be met the next day, while he had 
not half the amount. He made me out in Mitchels- 
town to-day to show that he had discharged the debt 
by borrowing the money from a neighbor. A horse, 
he asserted, would not draw more than four hundred- 
weight to the height of his farm, and the horse would 
cost 4s. a day. 

" Michael Regan's is the adjoining farm, verging 
on the top, in character almost exactly the same, and 
in extent about 47 acres, as he himself roughs it — 
74a. 2r. 3 5 p. statute measure, according to the figures 
in the valuation. He also has been served with an 
ejectment. His rent was raised from £$ 9s. 6d. to 
£1$ 16s. 6d. He was out when we called, and, al- 
though he came into Mitchelstown to-day to proffer 
me his statement, inasmuch as his evidence was ex- 
tracted, no doubt fully, at the trial, I do not care to 
return to it further than to say he swore that he had 
ten children • that his father and himself built the 
house and reclaimed the land; and that his stock 
consisted of six mountain-cows, six yearlings, three 



264 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

calves, a horse, ten sheep, two pigs and nine bon- 
nives. 

" Close by lives the widow English, whose rent 
was raised from 19s. to £2 is., and who, although 
she has accepted the new tariff from the beginning, 
is as poorly housed and as earnest as any of her 
neighbors in declaring that the farm would not give 
them stirabout only that two of her sons have been 
taken into the employment of Mr. Bridge. One of 
her sons fills poor Hyland's place as coachman at 
a wage of 10s. a week, without diet or other per- 
quisites than clothes, and his brother is a laborer on 
the same terms. 

" The next cabin on our way was that of another 
of the arranging tenants, Edmund Fitzgerald, who 
accepted an increase from £1 js. 6d. to £2 17s. 6d. 
Not a soul was within except four pretty children, 
the eldest of whom was not six years old. Three 
of the little creatures were stowed into a high wooden 
cradle, in which they were rocking themselves joy- 
ously at some distance from the fire, while the eldest, 
with the aid of a big dog, was gravely mounting 
guard over the tiny trio in the cradle. The place 
was scrupulously clean ; there were even touches of 
a rude elegance here and there. The bedroom had 
been roughly boarded in the good old times, though 
the timber was in many spots displaced or rotting 
of age and damp. The bed-furniture, though poor, 
was clean. A half-pint champagne-bottle trans- 
formed into a medicine-bottle was on the shelf. 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 265 

Imagine the adventures of that bottle from the 
moment it was primed with glowing liquor in 
some sunny vineyard of the Vosges until fate made 
it the receptacle of castor-oil in a thatched cabin on 
Skeheenarinka ! There was a little fireplace also in 
this bedroom, and on the mantelpiece two plaster-of- 
paris statuettes of the Blessed Virgin, the solitary 
representatives of the fine arts that have yet crossed 
my view. Yet the young mistress of the house, whom 
we met in the borheen, a tidily- dressed, fair-faced, 
though careworn housewife, looked and spoke as 
despondingly as if her fate too were to be decided 
at the Clonmel sessions. 

" We were now able to resume the saddle for a 
ride through a narrow and broken causeway, bor- 
dered by a deep channel, around the shoulder of the 
mountain, where the sight of the cultivated plains 
disappeared, and we were gazing into the gloomy 
and forbidding chasms that opened between Lyreen 
and the bold front of Galteemore — places where the 
gamekeeper and a stray sportsman alone penetrate. 

" Here I came across a farmer with the only good 
frieze coat I saw on the mountain. This was Patrick 
Slattery, whose farm in parts looks warmer, and is, at 
all events, better cultivated, than those of his neigh- 
bors. He has accepted the increased valuation, and 
says he can pay it but badly. For forty-one years all 
his labor and capital have gone into the land, and, to 
use his own words, ' it was a fright to look at when I 
came there.' 



266 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

" Slattery's next neighbor, Patrick Carroll, who 
came up in flannel jacket and shabby hat while we 
were speaking, made a sad contrast. ' He is the most 
industrious creature on the mountain,' said Slattery. 
Carroll's holding is one of the highest, and his soil 
the most thankless. The heather makes constant in- 
roads upon his pasture-lands, and I saw one field off 
which he had himself built up a thick and almost 
continuous wall of large stones five feet high. His 
rent had been raised from £$ 8s. to £8 ys. 6d. He 
has not settled, and says he cannot ; but no process 
of ejectment has yet been served. He spoke in a 
tone of indescribable wretchedness of his outlook. 
His oats this season cost him 16s. a barrel for five 
barrels of seed, upon credit ; he paid 7s. a day for 
the ploughing, with oats for the horse and bread, 
butter and tea for the ploughman (for in those re- 
gions the ploughman is a superior being); yet he 
never threshed the crop. The potatoes, upon which 
he spent £4 in manure, will last him three months 
more. 4 Yellow meal from that to August, and where 
will I get the price of it ?' His fields are grazed by 
three milking-cows, a heifer and two calves — nothing 
more. His dairy transactions for the year were these: 
three firkins of butter (three quarters), two of which 
he sold in Mitchelstown for £3 apiece, and the third, 
which he sent to Cork, returned him but £2 14s. 
profit. 

" Striking a faint and boggy track across the hea- 
ther, we passed sheer over the summit of the mountain, 




■tr\ . ' 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 269 

turning our backs upon that dismal congress of glens 
and precipices known in old topography by the cru- 
elly-ironic name of Paradise, and descending by a 
new system of dry watercourses upon the townland 
of Coolegarranroe. The portion of it over which we 
had time to range before darkness descended covers 
the face of a sister-ridge to that of Skeheenarinka, 
sloping upward, with somewhat better-sheltered pas- 
ture-lands, to a point at which its crest rises precip- 
itously like a wall of rock. The cattle here bore 
marks of better feeding, but the oat and potato crops 
were, if anything, more blighted. 

" Michael Noonan is one of those who have bowed 
under the valuation. His rent was raised from £2 
14s. to £$ 14s., and he has undertaken to pay it, 
* though God knows I might as well pay for my own 
coffin.' I spoke with his sick wife as she stood at the 
door of her miserable cabin, which is sunk in a crev- 
ice of the hill, with rain-marks coursing down the 
walls within and the usual slough of rotting abom- 
inations steaming in front. She spoke of her affairs 
in a mood of settled despondency, as of a fate which 
it were hopeless to expect to better. Her husband 
has three strippers and two calves. 'We did not get 
two firkins of butter out of the three of them, and we 
have not a supper of potatoes in the house. Every 
meal we eat from this out will be on credit, and no- 
body gives us credit now that can help it' The tot- 
tering little cow-house is her dairy. 'We would not 
make the bit of butter at all, only the doctor, when 

16 



270 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

he said mass here, brought us luck ; but, sure, what 
is the use of it all ?' Her husband we met crossing 
the fields shortly after, and he pointed out in the mid- 
dle of his pasturage a wall of stones — some of them 
seemingly half a ton in weight — which had been rolled 
down from the higher ground after being rooted by 
his own hand. 

"Thomas Kearney's farm of 105a. 35p., upon 
which the rent has been raised from £$ 12s. 6d. to 
£17 1 OS., lies close by, part of it smothered with 
heath, part laid down in scanty but fairly sweet grass, 
and 16 acres of light, cold soil on an exposed slope, 
with a subsoil of sand and marl reddened for tillage. 
Kearney has been served with an ejectment. I saw 
his seven cows. ' I wish I took them up to Dublin 
to give evidence in place of myself,' Kearney re- 
marked as he pointed to his gaunt and shrunken 
stock. They were really poor mountain-cattle. He 
states that he made six firkins of butter this season, 
which fetched £5 5s. to £5 6s. per firkin. ' Put 
against that,' he added, ' that I must buy hay and 
hand-feed them from the 1st of November to the 
15th of May, or they would die in the cold.' The 
rest of his stock comprises twelve sheep, six heifers 
and two sows — those which he told the Dublin jury 
would frighten them to look at. Upon cross-exam- 
ination in Dublin he admitted that he made up a for- 
tune of £%0 for his daughter and paid £38 for the 
interest of part of his holdings. Yet this lord of a 
hundred acres was dressed in flannel, and his family 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 2J\ 

of ten souls were after a dinner of Indian meal and 
will be so regaled for nine months to come. His 
potatoes are gone, and his oats were never threshed. 

" Terence Murphy, Sr., is another of those under 
process of ejectment. He holds 14a. ir. I4p. statute 
measure, the poor-law valuation of which is £5 10s., 
the old rent £$ 15s., and the new demand £j ys. 
His farming operations have been these : An acre of 
potatoes cost him £4. 8s., paid for seed to James 
Neill, £1 paid for ploughing, and £$ 10s. for eleven 
hundredweight of special manure, still unpaid for. 
He will have potatoes for six weeks to come, and 
the rest must be reserved for seed. He put down 
two barrels of seed-oats, which the neighbors sowed 
gratis in return for like little services done by him, 
and never threshed a grain of it. His livestock is 
made up of three dairy-cows and three goats — nei- 
ther sheep nor lamb nor donkey. His butter is sold 
in lumps. His family circle numbers seven, and 
counts absent ones in America and Australia. 

"Maurice Gorman has a lease of 116 acres. He 
is tenant from year to year of another holding of 
29a. ir. 2ip., and from this he is under notice of 
ejectment. Gorman appeared to be one of the strong 
farmers of the mountain — one who was not likely, 
therefore, to let any plot of land slip through his 
fingers for the sake of two guineas a year if any 
profit were to be had by keeping it. The holding 
now in question is perched highest upon the Galtee 
range, and is grazed only by cows. It has not been 



272 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

broken for twelve years, and is fast sinking back 
into barrenness. The man whom Gorman succeed- 
ed in possession made his living by cutting turf and 
selling heath for litter. The rent used to be £2 2s., 
and was fixed by Mr. Walker at £4 4s. 

" The short day was already near its death when 
we recrossed to Skeheenarinka. Our passage lay 
across a steep and rocky gorge between whose jag- 
ged sides tumbles down a mountain-stream which 
might easily enough become a torrent. This is the 
precipice to the brink of which Denis Murphy in- 
vited the lord chief-justice, with the promise of a 
' Niagara megrim,' and in sober earnest a few days 
after the trial a neighboring tenant named Thomas 
Leonard was precipitated down the gorge, and lies 
abed to this day with his injuries. I did not experi- 
ence any American variety of dizziness in the pas- 
sage, but I would have thought twice of clambering 
up the opposite height without a safe guide or in 
wet weather. 

" We had only daylight for two visits more. One 
was to the house of William Neill, who has been 
under notice to quit, but has for the moment been 
spared process of eviction. Another cleanly little 
peasant home is this, and another half dozen deject- 
ed people inhabit it. Neill has a horse, which, ac- 
cording to his own assertion, must be fed on kindlier 
soil than his. The story of his tillage experiments 
is the same tale of blight and loss that was dinned 
into my ears in every cabin on the mountain. He 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 273 

has a milch-cow and three heifers. He offered the 
cow at the last fair of Ballyporeen for £2, and no- 
body closed with him. 

" Maurice Fitzgerald is under process of eject- 
ment. He holds 15 statute acres, the old rent of 
which was £1 18s. 6d., and the new demand £6 10s. 
He offered Mr. Bridge £4 in vain. His crop of oats 
was sown under the double advantage of having the 
seed himself and having the ploughing done by his 
neighbors; yet he exhibited the note from Mr. Burke 
of Cahir for £1 18s. 5d. for the crop, less about ten 
stone, reserved for himself. He has to pay Lord 
Lismore for the grazing of his six sheep and six 
lambs. The dairy-stock comprises three milch- 
cows, with a heifer in calf. The produce last season 
was four firkins of butter, to make up the fourth of 
which Mrs. Burke had to purchase fifteen pounds. 
Two of these fetched ,£3 9s., and the two others, 
sold in Cork, yielded a united profit of £$ 12s. 6d. 

" Thus far a first excursion around Skeheenarinka. 
Great portion of it has yet to be traversed before 
turning to the five or six other townlands embraced 
in the estate." 

" I thought it my duty to repair to-day to the 
Mountain Lodge to lay before Mr. Bridge, if he 
should be so minded, a frank statement of what I 
had heard and seen, and to receive with scrupulous 
respect whatever denial or correction he should have 
wished to see placed side by side with evidences in- 



274 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

evitably tinged with onesidedness. Owing to his 
departure to Roscrea for the Christmas holidays, 
this intention has been frustrated, and these sheets 
must go forth without the possible explanations 
which I know you will readily give Mr. Bridge an 
opportunity most fully of making. The Mountain 
Lodge is picturesquely seated on a sunny south- 
ern slope overlooking a picturesque wooded gorge, 
through which the meandering course of the Fun- 
cheon marks the division between Limerick and 
Tipperary, opening on one side over the far-reach- 
ing plains bounded by the Knockmeldown Moun- 
tains, and upon the other side into the gloomy heart 
of the Galtees. It is approached by a long by-road 
outside the village of Kilbeheny. 

"At the base of the mountain lies the model farm 
of the estate — that of Mr. Holywell, the only Eng- 
lish tenant, I believe, on the property, and manifest- 
ly the most skilled agriculturist. But, then, his fields 
are the fat of the lowlands, and were thoroughly 
drained at the expense of the land company before 
Mr. Holywell set foot there. His farmhouse is a 
little mansion fronted by a well-timbered lawn and 
backed by extensive slated stables, barns and out- 
offices. His cattle and his tillage are of a totally 
different order from any other I have seen upon the 
estate. Both are excellent, and do him infinite 
credit. Higher up there are large nurseries of 
young firs, larches and beech trees, with which Mr. 
Bridge carried on an extensive system of plantations 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 275 

on the mountain-sides. His own avenue is thrown 
open to the many, for whom it is a short-cut into 
the glens. The way is bordered on each side by 
dense clumps of rhododendrons, whose flowers, in 
hundreds of thousands, make this, I am told, in 
summer, another Pass of Roses. The avenue winds 
steeply up until a bend brings one in full view of 
the Lodge in its eyrie on the Tipperary side of the 
river. It is in winter a lonesome-looking place, but 
the elements of theatric scenery lie all round, and 
the woods are richly stocked with pheasants, hares, 
woodcocks and the numerous herds of wild deer 
that infest the heights of the Galtees. The Lodge 
is a plain sandstone, two-story building, with a short, 
foolscap tower, on a little gravelled plateau. 

" The iron hut in which Mr. Bridge's body-guard 
of constabulary, under command of Constable Car- 
raher, are housed, is pitched in the yard to the rear, 
between the Lodge and the woods, which stretch 
over the mountain toward Tipperary. It is a low, 
squat, iron-proof compartment, in which three of 
the men have their hammocks swung. Their meals 
are cooked in a wooden hut facing it, and their com- 
rades sleep in an adjoining stable. 

" As I rapped at the hall-door of the Lodge an 
affectionate little beagle rushed up to be fondled. 
The servant from whom I inquired whether I could 
see Mr. Bridge informed me that he had left for 
Roscrea two days before, and would not be back 
before Monday next. To the suggestion that I might 



2j6 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

leave my card to say who called, I replied that it was 
not necessary. 

"As I jumped on the car the head-bailiff, O'Logh- 
len, sprang out of the house, bareheaded and some- 
what flurried, and commenced to gyrate around me 
in a very amusing way. I found it necessary to in- 
quire whether there was anything I could do for him. 
Very sheepishly he replied, 

" ' I thought you wanted to see Mr. Bridge, sir.' 

"'Well?' 

" ' Mr. Bridge is from home, sir:' 

" ' Well ?' 

" He stopped for a moment hesitatingly : 

" ' I think, sir, it would be well you left your name, 
to let him know who called.' 

" ' I don't.' 

" Mr. O'Loghlen moved backward, and the car 
forward. It had not gone far down the avenue when 
the coachman was at our back on horseback, and I 
hear that my visit to Mountain Lodge is exercising 
the curiosity of some of the authorities there mightily 
these leisure times. 

" It is stated that altogether twenty-six processes 
of ejectment have been served, but I have as yet 
traced only sixteen. Two more of the tenants have 
settled. The rest declare that acceptance of the re- 
valuation is impossible. Snow is falling to-night on 
the mountains." 

In September, 1879, the same journal sent a com- 
missioner to Mayo. The estate visited was that of 




I:: 




... I Ml 







THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 279 

the earl of Lucan, who owns sixty thousand acres. 
He is an absentee landlord ; he goes to the estate 
twrce a year to collect his rents. None of the 
money goes back to the country. The commis- 
sioner reports : 

" In order to the understanding of the thoughts 
which in this hour of their misery are fermenting in 
the Irish farmers' minds, there are certain phases of 
the past which will not brook concealment. The 
peasant who passes along the cheerless road from 
Castlebar to near Westport cannot choose but think 
that he is, as it were, traversing a cemetery of dead 
villages among the undistinguishable homesteads of 
thousands who appear there no more. These are the 
bleak monuments of ' the famine clearances.' It is 
only old inhabitants who can identify even the sites 
of villages such as the Kilvrees, Caillogue, Clogher- 
nach, Clugan, Rahinbar, Derryharney, Corhue, Bohess 
and Lapplagh, which used to send forth their thou- 
sands to O'ConnelPs monster meetings less than 
forty years ago. The thousands rotted of hunger, 
died in the ditches, were flung overboard the fever- 
ships or ' went with a vengeance ' to the ends of the 
world. A few thorn-bushes, a clump of trees or a 
naked gable-wall here and there are the only grave- 
stones of those buried villages. The very stones 
of their huts are built into the roadside walls, as 
though to obliterate all traces of the dark events that 
levelled them. An Irish-American who revisited this 
desolate district a few days ago, after thirty years* 



280 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

absence, was for days poking through the country 
without discovering any old friend or landmarks ex- 
cept the graveyard, and he said bitterly he wondered 
they had not turned that too into grazing-ground. 
To show that I do not exaggerate, one parish which 
I could name once supported one thousand eight 
hundred families ; it counts six hundred now. An- 
other, farther westward, has had its population shorn 
down from two thousand two hundred to seven hun- 
dred. And the peasants, who told me they remem- 
bered seeing the roof-trees sawn through and hear- 
ing the thud of the crowbar, remarked with bitterness 
that every spot which nature or the labor of genera- 
tions of tenants had rendered fertile was appropriated 
to the bullocks and sheep of the lords of the soil, 
while the remnant of the small holders (except those 
who were safe in the possession of ancient leases) 
were driven into swamps to commence their weary 
work of reclamation anew. 

" ' This makes the madmen who have made men mad 
By their contagion.' 

" The merchants of Westport had precisely the 
same dejected tale to tell as the merchants of Castle- 
bar. One of them, as I have already told you, who 
could only collect fifteen per cent, on his last year's 
debts, has had to increase them this year to five thou- 
sand pounds. Another has distributed eight thou- 
sand five hundred pounds' worth of Indian meal on 
credit, another over four thousand pounds' worth, and 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 28 1 

so on through every shopkeeper or wayside huckster 
in or around the place. 

" In a potato-plot underneath Croagh Patrick we 
stopped to talk to a poor old fellow bent and shaking 
who was digging potatoes in a field of flourishing- 
looking stalks. These imposing-looking fat stalks, I 
am sorry to say, when they were dug out, had only 
a small and wet and scanty family of potatoes at their 
roots, and it took a long strip of ground to furnish 
the poor old fellow's basket for dinner. ' But, God 
be praised ! they might be worse,' and ' Who knows 
what God is doing for us, if it howlds dry for another 
while ?' — it had been ' howlding wet ' with a vengeance 
for eighteen consecutive hours previously — and ' May- 
be we'd reap the oats about Michaelmas, if there's 
any ripening,' were his dismal consolations. For all 
his clinging to hope, I don't think his hope was much 
in this world ; and as he stood there with his arms 
crossed on the head of his spade, and told us that he 
paid six pounds a year for two acres of land to a mid- 
dleman, that he owed a year's rent and had not a 
halfpenny to pay it, that he owed for eleven bags of 
meal, which had supported him since Christmas, that 
his share of two pounds of pork on Christmas day 
was the only element of variety in his dietary since, 
as he rubbed his hand wearily across his forehead 
and recalled all the years of famine and struggle and 
hopeless slavery that had gone over his head in this 
forgotten spot, and, looking across the hill, fixed his 
eyes upon the place where the village of Thornhill 



282 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

had stood, and stands no longer, and, striving to look 
on into the future, could only draw his arm across 
his eyes and shake his head, — I longed for some 
power of pencil or lens that would fix him as he 
stood as an image of the fate of the Irish small 
farmer. 

" A ragged old woman in a shred of red petticoat, 
and with a certain air of sunny resignation under all 
her yellow wrinkles, came up while we were speak- 
ing. She had been paying ten pounds a year for a 
plot of land. Being unable to scrape together the 
rent, she was forced to surrender the land, and was 
now living, God knows how, with a disabled husband 
in a dark little cabin by the roadside, the rent of 
which she is obliged to pay by giving up one day's 
labor in the week for the benefit of a mighty lord. 
Just as we parted, three policemen in their fine clothes 
strolled in superb idleness down the road, the only 
other creatures visible in the silent gray landscape. 
If I were a great painter, I would spend half a life 
trying to realize that scene. 

" Some miles farther on, where a belt of Sir Roger 
Palmer's property (which runs in a broken, zig-zag 
line through some thirty miles of country from near 
Croagh Patrick to near Killala, eighty-one thousand 
acres in all) again intersects the road at Lecanvey, 
we met numbers of the tenantry. They all owed a 
year's rent at least, and were hopelessly crushed 
down with other debts. ' We have not a shilling if 
it were to save us from starvation,' exclaimed one. 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 283 

* They might as well put a rope around our necks at 
wanst as ask us for it,' said Number Two. And a 
third, with a vehement oath, declared that the people 
would have been dead and rotten long ago only for 
the charity of the Westport merchant and a local 
trader, whom the man named with flashing eyes. 
The agent gave them time until August to pay the 
November rents. His reckoning was that the cottier- 
farmers, who almost universally throughout this 
country-side go to England yearly to reap the har- 
vest and return in time to reap their own, would 
have ere that time earned sufficient tribute for the 
landlord. 

" But even here misfortune dogged their wretched 
steps. The labor market in England is flooded with 
hands from other depressed industries; besides that, 
there, too, the harvest is late and bad. The poor 
Irish harvester is crowded out. I am told at the 
post-offices that the post-office orders sent home 
hitherto have not amounted to more than a quarter 
of the usual average. I am told in the cabins that 
many of the harvesters are sick or idle in the great 
English cities, applying at the workhouse-gates for 
passage home. 

" The little village of Louisburg, down by the At- 
lantic, we found seething with a sort of stunned and 
speechless excitement. Several hundred men were 
congregated upon the street in front of the rent-office 
conversing low with downcast heads, as if each of 
them had a near friend dead. These were the mar- 



284 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

quis of Sligo's tenantry, of the parish of Kilgeever. 
They had been convoked by summons from the 
bailiff to pay the May gale and the arrears into the 
hands of the agent, Mr. Sydney Smith, who, they 
say, is a near relative of Mr. Patten Smith Bridge, 
sometime of the Galtees (though, of course, that 
could not be fairly called his fault even if it were 
true). 

" Mr. Smith attended, so did the tenants, headed 
by their faithful priests, the Rev. William Joyce, P. P., 
and the Rev. Father Lavelle, C. C. ; but instead of 
rent they presented him with a respectful memorial, 
which they asked him to forward to the marquis of 
Sligo as their apology. In this document, which 
was worded with studied moderation, they expressed 
their willingness, but their utter inability, to pay 
even the rents that their holdings bore in former 
years. ' As to the increased rent, it is altogether an 
impossibility. We have worked and toiled,' they 
declared with touching eloquence, ' to the utmost of 
our strength in order to make a soil by its nature 
cold, barren and swampy fertile and productive, and 
yet, with all our efforts, we cannot procure from the 
land the bare necessaries of life.' Then, after stating 
in plain terms that for years it has been only the 
consideration of the shopkeepers that has kept many 
of them from ' starvation ' or from ' the workhouse,' 
there came this fearful fact : ' You will doubtless feel 
surprised to hear that so great is our indebtedness 
that the property of the greater part of the tenants 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 285 

on His Lordship's estate in this parish, if sold out, 
would scarcely pay the creditors.' And the poor 
people wound up their appeal with a very hand- 
some compliment to 'the noble house of Westport ' 
and its motto, which, it appears, is ' Live and let 
live.' 

" Mr. Sydney Smith listened with a grave face, in- 
timated that there were some unpleasant phrases in 
the memorial which must be expunged before he 
could place it under the eyes of His Lordship, but 
finally blurted out roundly (as I am given to under- 
stand) that, from a communication of His Lordship's 
views which he had received lately, he was afraid 
that the memorial might just as well remain un- 
amended and unpresented. The rentless tenantry, 
having nothing to pay and nothing more to urge, 
were bowed airily into the street, where they were 
crouching helplessly at the time of our arrival." 
The following is from the Connaught Telegraph : 
" A letter appeared recently in the London Times 
and the Dublin Freemaris Journal, signed by Charles 
Ormsby Blake of County Mayo, asserting that num- 
bers of his tenantry had been taken from their beds 
in the night and been compelled to swear not to pay 
their rents to Mr. Blake. To this charge the tenant- 
ry make reply in the following terms : 

" ' Claremorris, June 23, 1879. 
" ' We the undersigned, tenant-farmers, residents 
of Coolcon and Ballyglass, County of Mayo, and 



286 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE, 

tenants to Charles Ormsby, Esq., do impeach the 
veracity of the letter which appeared over Mr. 
Blake's name in the London Times, Freeman's Jour- 
nal and the provincial papers, etc. 

" ' We emphatically deny that we were, " on the 
night of May n, 1879," taken off our beds and 
sworn by strange men not to pay our rents to 
Mr. Blake, as stated by him in his memorial to 
His Grace the duke of Marlborough, lord-lieu- 
tenant of Ireland. 

" ' Neither did we threaten a process-officer or 
ejectment-server, as stated by Mr. Blake, as such an 
individual, to our knowledge, did not put in an ap- 
pearance in our townlands. 

" ' We deny owing three half-years' rent, as stated 
by Mr. Blake. The majority of his tenantry have 
paid Mr. Blake a year's rent over their agreement, 
on his promise of giving leases — a promise he has 
failed to keep. 

" ' It is true we in a body refused to pay Mr. 
Ormsby Blake's agents, Messrs. Stewart & Kincaid, 
a rack-rent; but we offered those gentlemen a full 
and fair rent, which we are at any moment ready to 
hand them over. 

" ' Owing to the great depression in trade and re- 
duction in the value of agricultural produce, we are 
not able to pay the exorbitant rent imposed on us, 
as the following tabular statement will show to the 
world : 




■.evrTVPfco. pun a. 



Sexton. 
Bitftfar. 



Collins. 
Davitt. 
Eagan. 



Healy. 

Brennan. 



AGITATORS OF THE PRESENT. 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 



289 



Tenants' names. 
John Joyce, Ballyglass . 
Wm. Joyce, Ballyglass . 
L. Joyce, Ballyglass . . 
D. Slattery, Ballyglass . 
M. Hannon, Ballyglass . 
Widow Coyne, Ballyglass 
Widow Hahigan, Ballyglass 
M. Hannon, Ballyglass . 
P. Mangan, Ballyglass . 
Widow McDonagh, Ballygl 
M. Green, Ballyglass . 
Widow McHugh, Ballyglass 
J. Donohue, Ballyglass . 
P. Corcoran, Coolcon . . 
Thomas Hessian, Coolcon 
J. Mullan, Coolcon . . . 
D. Walters, Coolcon . . 
Pat Flanigan, Coolcon . 
J. Walters, Coolcon . . 
M. Heanue, Coolcon . . 
P. Prendergast, Coolcon 



Gov't valuation. 


Rack-rent. 


• £8 








£" 


2 6 


. 8 


10 





12 





. 8 


5 





14 





• 17 








32 


10 


• 15 








22 





. 61 








90 





. 6 








8 





• 15 


15 





22 


5 


• 7 


10 





IO 


12 6 


• 9 


12 





12 


12 


• 9 


4 





12 


10 


. 12 








18 





. 10 








17 


15 


. 8 


10 





12 


11 


• 9 


5 





17 





. 8 


5 





15 


9 


• 15 


5 





22 


10 


. 10 








13 


4 


• 15 


*3 





24 





. 12 


10 





23 





. 22 


10 





45 


10 



" ' Before the stripping of the land, some eight 
years ago, when the excessive rent was imposed 
upon us, we will give an instance of what the old 
rent was and the present rent extorted out of us : 
James Hessian, government valuation, £\2 ; old rent, 
£\^\ present rent, £26 13s. 6d. ; and the majority 
are in like proportion. 

" ' We, the above-named tenantry, empower and 
authorize Mr. James Daly, proprietor of the Con- 
naught Telegraph, to publish this letter in vindica- 
tion of our characters, 
17 



29O THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

" * Signed in presence of P. J. Gordon, J. W. Nally 
and others, etc.' " 

It would be easy to multiply such testimony ; dur- 
ing the years mentioned the newspapers were full of 
similar narratives. One more will suffice. On No- 
vember 19, 1879, the- editor of the Connaught Tel- 
egraph, James Daly, Michael Davitt and John Bryce 
Killen were arrested in Dublin for speeches alleged 
to have incited a breach of the peace. The next 
day the following placard was posted throughout 
Mayo : 

" To the People of Mayo — 

" Fellow-Countrymen : The hour of trial has 
come. Your leaders are arrested. Davitt and Daly 
are in prison. You know your duty. Will you do 
it ? Yes, you will. Balla is the place of meeting, 
and Saturday is the day. Come in your thousands, 
and show the government and the world that your 
rights you will maintain. To the rescue, in the 
mightiness of your numbers, of the land and lib- 
erty. God save the people ! Balla, Balla, Saturday 
next." 

The day of the meeting this placard appeared : 
" Parnell and Davitt to the People of Mayo : 
Men of Mayo, we earnestly counsel such of you as 
intend to be witnesses of the eviction scene to be 
dignified, orderly and peaceful in your conduct. The 
future of our movement depends upon your attitude 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 29 1 

this day. Give no excuse for violence on the part of 
the government, and our great cause is won." 

Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon and Mr. Sexton were 
present at the meeting. The proceedings were 
thus reported : 

" One vast procession was formed in Balla for the 
march to Dempsey's farm at Loonamore. That pro- 
cession was one of the most remarkable ever seen. 
The men were compacted four deep in a dense col- 
umn spread over a mile and a half of road, a couple 
of hundred mounted men bringing up the rear. Pass- 
ing the house of Sir Robert Blosse's agent, the cry 
of ' Three groans for tyrants !' was taken up all along 
the ranks. During the march home the band played 
the * Dead March ' in this neighborhood. 

" Dempsey's farm is situated on the crest of a steep 
hill overlooking for more than a mile the Balla road. 
When the head of the procession reached the foot of 
the hill, the fields overhead were seen to be full of 
armed policemen, who fell into rank at the approach 
of the procession. The intentions of the police were 
even then in considerable doubt. 

" Mr. Parnell and the leaders were the first to scale 
the hill. They were informed by Dempsey that the 
sheriff had promised to give him more time. The 
police had been by this time drawn up in a body 
at the rear of the house, under command of Major 
Wyse, R. M., Castlebar. 

" A rath within fifty yards of Dempsey's house on 
the brow of the hill was immediately fixed as the 



292 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

place of meeting. Now another very singular scene 
took place. The whole road below for more than a 
mile was covered by this huge peasant-procession. 
As the head of the column reached the foot of the 
hill it parted, two to either side, and climbed the hill 
in an immense semicircle extending over the whole 
face of the hill. The two horns of this vast crescent 
advanced quickly and simultaneously, as if with the 
intention of surrounding the house and with it a 
large body of the police. The police immediately 
prepared to retire, but Mr. Parnell exerted himself 
to stop the movement, and both sides of the advan- 
cing procession, having halted, came quietly together 
around the speakers. There must have been quite 
eight thousand men in that extraordinary array, and 
their self-possession, orderliness and enthusiasm 
were even more remarkable than their numbers. 
The Ballinrobe brass band arrived during the 
meeting. 

" Mr. Thomas Brennan (afterward arrested) said : 
" We are here to-day for a threefold purpose. We 
are here, in the first place, to protest against the evic- 
tion and possible death of nine of God's creatures. 
We are here to protest in the name of our country 
and of justice against the unconstitutional arrest of 
our leaders, who are now paying the penalty of their 
devotion to the people's cause (cheers for them), and 
we are here also to declare our determination to 
go on with this movement until victory is secured 
(cheers). 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 293 

" A Voice. — Victory or death ! 

" Mr. Brennan. — And until the last trace of feudal 
landlordism is swept from the country. The English 
government has come to the rescue of that accursed 
institution (groans), but it cannot save it. The old 
crumbling edifice is going, and it must fall (cheers). 
Prison-bars cannot hide the light of God's truth, and, 
though you or I may have to follow Mr. Davitt or 
Mr. Daly, our cause cannot be imprisoned (cheers). 
That cause is just, and it must triumph (cheers). 

" A Voice. — We won't fail you, any way. 

" Mr. Brennan. — My friends, our lives are no 
longer our own. They now belong to our country 
and to justice (cheers). We must consecrate them 
to-day (cries of ' So we will !') to the advancement 
of that cause for which our friends are suffering. I, 
for one, am not here to-day to withdraw anything I 
have ever said in this movement since I first stood 
upon that platform in Irishtown (cries of 'Never!' 
and cheers). And whatever may be the words which 
Mr. Davitt used at the Gurteen meeting, I here adopt 
them to-day (cheers) ; and if I knew them, I would 
repeat them for you, believing in my soul that 
they are the words of justice and truth (loud cheer- 
ing)- 

" A Voice. — My life on you ! 

" Mr. Brennan. — It will become us here not to 
make long-winded orations to-day. The time for 
mere speech-making is gone by. The hour of re- 
solve and act has arrived (cheers). 



294 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

" A Voice. — Stand together ! 

" Mr. Brennan. — The speech to-day is the indig- 
nation which I see flashing from your eyes and the 
determination which rests upon your brows (cheers). 
Think of the possible scene which we might be called 
upon here to-day to witness. Think of the poor man 
who lies in yonder cabin, the hot fever darting wildly 
through his brain ; think of the poor child who every 
time he asks for a morsel of bread sends a pang worse 
than a bayonet-thrust through its mother's heart (cries 
of ' True !'). Think of this, and then think of the 
evictor (groans, and cries of ' Down with him !') who 
has fled the country that his ears may not catch the 
execrations of the people. 

" A Voice. — That his eyes may never see, either 
(laughter). 

" Mr. Brennan.— Think of him as he enjoys all 
the luxuries of life and pockets the money which the 
sweat of the poor man has wrought from the land 
(groans), for in this enlightened nineteenth century 
God's first decree to fallen man is contravened by 
human law, and the majority of mankind must work 
and toil to support the few in idleness (groans). 

" A Voice. — It won't be so any longer. 

" Another. — Groan every tyrant (groans). 

" Mr. Brennan. — Think of the scene of '47 ; think 
of the blazing roof-tree ; think, oh think ! of the work- 
house and the emigrant ship ; think of the starvation 
and the death and the coffinless graves ; and then 
tell me to-day, will you be true to the preaching of 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 295 

our friends in prison ? (Loud cheering, and cries of 
* We will !') 

" A Voice. — Our blood is up. 

" Mr. Brennan. — Shall one generation witness two 
such scenes as '47 ? (Cries of ' Never !') Forbid it, 
Heaven ! I call upon every one of you who can to- 
day to do everything in your power to avoid it. Or- 
ganize for the protection of your own rights ; combine 
that you may offer an unbroken front to the common 
enemy (cheers). Surely, if ever you are to be earn- 
est, it is now, when your best and bravest are in 
prison ; now, when liberty of speech is proscribed in 
the land ; now, when the gaunt spectres of famine 
and death are standing by your thresholds (cheers). 
I appeal to one class in the community especially. 
I appeal to the men of the royal Irish constabulary, 
and I ask them, Are they content to remain or to be- 
come the destroyers of their people, of their own kith 
and kin ? (cheers). Turning toward the police, the 
speaker continued : Look at a'possible future ; look 
at your own brother lying in yonder ditch dead and 
naked : the last garment was sold to buy a measure 
of milk for the poor child in whose body the teeth 
of the lean dog is now fastened (groans). Are you 
human nature? Can you look upon such scenes, 
strong men as you are, without feeling your knees 
tremble and a curse gurgling in your throats? Need 
I remind you that in '47, when you were called on to 
do work similar to that with which you are now threat- 
ened, when one of your force fired upon an unhappy 



296 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

crowd, to find five minutes later that his bullet had 
lodged in the breast of the mother that bore him ? 
You are Irishmen, and I doubt not that beneath 
many a policeman's jacket a warm Irish heart beats 
(cheers). Are you content, then, to be the destroyers 
of your own people, or will you rather twine hands 
with them and snatch victory from death, and save 
the lives of the people ? (cheers). — As for you, my 
friends, your course is clear. Keep before your minds 
the great fact that the land of Ireland belongs to the 
people of Ireland (cheers). Follow the teaching of 
the apostles of our creed, who are now its martyrs 
and its confessors. We tell you here to-day what 
has been told you from every platform in your coun- 
try. We tell you to pay no rent until you get a rea- 
sonable reduction. W r e tell you to take no land from 
which another man has been evicted (cheers). 

" A Voice. — Down with those that do ! 

" Mr. Brennan. — Should such a mean wretch be 
found in Mayo to snatch such a farm, then, I say, go 
mark him well, cast him out of the society of men as 
an unclean thing. 

"A Voice. — Yes, as a mad dog. 

" Mr. Brennan. — Let none of you be found to buy 
with him or sell with him, and watch how the mod- 
ern Iscariot will prosper (cheers). The loss of each 
comrade but throws new duties on us who are left 
behind. Therefore we must all take off our coats 
and go to work earnestly in this movement. John 
Mitchel said from the dock in Green Street that 




I ) L< 111 nor 
Redpath. 



AGITATORS OF THE PRESENT. 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 299 

there were one, two, three — ay, a hundred — prepared 
to follow him. Ay, and Mr. Davitt must know in 
his prison-cell to-day that there are not hundreds, 
but hundreds of thousands, prepared to take up and 
carry out the work which he began (great cheering). 

" The resolution was carried with acclamation. 

" Mr. Parnell, M. P., on coming forward to propose 
the second resolution, was tremendously cheered. 
He said : 

" Mr. Chairman and men of Mayo, after the mag- 
nificent speech of Mr. Brennan it would ill become 
me to occupy your time with many words of mine. 
As he has told you, these are days not for words but 
for action (cheers) ; and upon your action to-day in 
coming here in the face of every intimidation, calm 
and determined to do your duty by your suffering 
fellow-creatures in yonder cabin, you have shown 
that you know how to distinguish what your' duty 
is to your country to-day (cheers). I alluded just 
now to Mr. Brennan's magnificent talent, but it is 
too true that in these days Ireland's most devoted 
and talented sons are marked out for imprisonment, 
and I very much fear that the result of the lead that 
he has taken in this movement will be that he may 
be also sent to share the fate of Messrs. Davitt, Daly 
and Killen (' No, no !'). Lord Beaconsfield has shown 
that he knows how to appreciate the strength of this 
movement (groans for him). The whole landed aris- 
tocracy of England, and of Ireland also, recognize that 
the movement that was begun last February on the 



300 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

• 

plains of Mayo, at Irishtown, has set the handwrit- 
ing on the wall for the downfall of the most infamous 
system of land tenure that the world has ever seen 
(cheers). I congratulate you upon your attitude 
to-day — calm, determined, self-reliant and within the 
law (cheers). In this way we shall teach our rulers 
that although they may violate the constitution, al- 
though they may rush into illegal acts, we are not 
going to be induced to follow them (' No, no !' and 
loud cheering). It is no use for me to repeat the 
advice that I gave the people of Mayo in February 
last. You have shown that in keeping a firm grip 
of your homesteads (cheers, and cries of ' So we will !'), 
and in refusing to pay an unjust rent, you have shown 
that you know well that in that advice is your only 
safety (cheers). 

" But I would exhort you with all the little power 
or force that I may possess to maintain the attitude 
that you have maintained up to the present (cheers, 
and cries of ' Never fear us !'), and not to allow any 
provocation to draw you away from your duty (cries 
of ' Never !'). Even if your leaders are torn from your 
midst, let them go : others will take their places (en- 
thusiastic cheering); and by showing that you under- 
stand your rights and the way in which you can win 
them, you will reduce the pride of this haughty gov- 
ernment, which, after having beaten the disunited 
Afghans, after having conquered the naked Zulus, 
has the temerity to come to Ireland and to place us 
on a level with these savages (groans). 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 30I 

"A Voice. — They will find us more formidable 
enemies. 

" Mr. Parnell. — I am not going to detain you. I 
merely wished to come into your midst to-day, for I 
feared that a terrible event was going to happen be- 
fore our eyes. I could not feel that I would have 
done my duty if I had allowed the people to come 
into danger and had remained away myself (loud 
cheering). It is the part of a coward to encourage 
others to take a position that he is not prepared to 
maintain himself, and I wished to come here to-day 
to join you in whatever fortune might befall you 
(prolonged cheers). Thank God that the eyes of 
the cruel landlord who was threatening a black — a 
terribly black — deed upon this day have been opened 
to the reality of the position ! Thank God that we, 
on the eve almost of what appeared to be the first 
eviction in this land agitation, have been spared that 
terrible infliction ! (cheers). I look upon this meeting, 
and the result of this meeting — I look upon the fact 
that the owners of that house are in possession of it — 
as the harbinger of the speedy and triumphant success 
of our movement (cheers). Had it been otherwise, 
had you been placed in that position when it would 
have been almost impossible for human hearts and 
hands to forbear, I tremble to think what might have 
been the result; but, thank God! we have been spared 
this, and that we have as the reward of the calm de- 
termination of the people of Mayo the magnificent 
triumph of this evening (loud cheering). Bring 



302 THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 

home, then, with you this lesson — that a man, how- 
ever powerful he may be, respects his fellow-men 
when they respect themselves (cheers), and that as 
you have shown that you know how to respect your- 
selves, so you may expect in the future that your 
right to the soil of Ireland will be respected by those 
who attempt to deprive you of it (cheers). Let us, 
then, not hesitate in our great work. Let us press 
forward (cheers). Let us recollect that we are the 
inheritors of a great past, that our country is a great 
country and worth fighting for, that we in these days 
have opportunities which were denied to your fathers 
when they struggled against tithes, and that the power 
of no man can prevail against a self-respecting and 
self-relying people (cheers). Let us, then, maintain 
our dignified attitude. Let us remain within the law 
and within the constitution, and let us stand, even 
though we have to stand on the last plank of the 
constitution ; let us stand until that plank is torn from 
under our feet (loud cheering). I have to propose for 
your adoption this resolution : 

" ' That we, the people of Mayo, protest against the 
recent arrests as an attempt on the part of the gov- 
ernment to stifle the voice of constitutional agitation 
and drive the people into acts of violence ' (cheers). 

" Mr. John Dillon seconded the resolution. 

" Mr. T. Sexton proposed the third resolution : 

" ' That we earnestly call upon the people of Ire- 
land to continue to maintain their attitude of dignified 
self-restraint, and to carefully abstain from giving the 



THE SEED OF THE LAND LEAGUE. 303 

government any excuse for inaugurating the policy 
of coercion which we believe they have in contem- 
plation.' 

" Mr. John Walsh, Balla, seconded the resolution. 

" Mr. Costelloe, Kiltimagh, proposed the fourth res- 
olution : 

" 4 That we hereby pledge ourselves to persevere in 
this movement until we have succeeded in securing 
for the Irish farmer free land.' 

" Mr. James O'Connor, Dublin, seconded the resolu- 
tion, which was adopted with acclamation." 

The Irish National Land League was now in full 
operation. Its aim and its policy were fully indicated 
at Balla. It proposed a peaceful, constitutional agita- 
tion to recover the lands of Ireland for the people to 
whom they naturally belong. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE MEN WHO GATHERED THE CROP. 

THERE is an impression in the minds of many 
Americans who read only British literature 
filtered through a small class of American news- 
papers that the Irish agitator is an ignorant ruffian. 
It is a singular fact that every man who has risen 
to sufficient distinction to be abused, imprisoned or 
slain for Ireland by the English government has 
been a man of high personal character, and that 
the leaders of Irish agitation have been almost in- 
variably men of exceptional intellectual gifts and 
educational training. The character and culture of 
Wolfe Tone may be judged by his autobiography. 
The agitators of a hundred years ago — the men who 
compelled England to concede the independence of 
the Irish Parliament — were the first thinkers in the 
country and had no superiors in the British empire. 
Many of them became distinguished members of the 
British Parliament after the passage of the act of 
legislative union. Robert Emmet, gentle and ac- 
complished, would have graced the most polished 
society of any country. His brother, Thomas Ad- 

304 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 305 

dis Emmet, and his companion in exile, Dr. Mac- 
neven, became equally distinguished in their respect- 
ive professions of law and medicine in New York ; 
and their monuments on Broadway proclaim for all 
time their services to the country which gave them 
home and opportunity. 

Those who led the agitation for Catholic emanci- 
pation were scholars and literary men. Sheil wrote 
Evadne, which still keeps the stage ; his speeches 
are studied by all who wish to become adepts in 
elaborate forensic art. The magnificent oratory of 
O'Connell richly displays his classical studies in 
France ; for, being a Catholic, he could get no ed- 
ucation in Ireland. The letters of Bishop Doyle, his 
coadjutor in agitating for emancipation, are of sin- 
gular literary beauty and remarkable argumentative 
power; and the late Archbishop MacHale of Tuam, 
who was a young priest when O'Connell was leading 
his people out of bondage, and who enthusiastically 
supported him, was possessed of attainments in the 
languages and the arts which even the universities 
of England rarely confer on the sons of hereditary 
wealth. 

The agitators of 1848 are so fully described in Sir 
Charles Gavan Duffy's Yottng Ireland that they need 
not be more than mentioned here ; they constituted 
a brilliant group whose genius is indelibly stamped 
on the thought and will for ever adorn the literature 
of their country. The Fenian movement of 1866 — 
so frequently sneered at, and yet so effectual for the 



306 THE GATHERERS OE THE CROP. 

good of Ireland that it wrung from the first minister 
of Great Britain not only the bill abolishing the 
State-Church in Ireland, but the public confession 
of that momentous fact — contained men of culture 
whose motives were as high as their judgment was 
faulty, and the speeches delivered by some of them 
on their trial for treason betray not only sublime 
courage and the purest patriotism, but evidences of 
culture which would have been eminently useful in 
private pursuits. 

The leaders of the present agitation are also men 
of education. They are not brilliant men, as were 
the group of '48 ; they do not include great orators 
like Grattan, Sheil or O'Connell ; but they are men 
of clear conception of economic principles, able to 
discuss the questions of land tenure and peasant 
proprietary, of home rule and the development of 
the natural resources of their country, with a co- 
gency which their opponents have been wholly un- 
able to match. They are engaged in serious bus- 
iness — the accomplishment of a vast economic and 
social reform by strictly peaceful and constitutional 
means. They ask no soldiers from France, as Wolfe 
Tone did ; they organize no conspiracies of reckless 
youth and undrilled yeomen, as poor Emmet did ; 
they have no thousands of armed and eager volun- 
teers at their backs, as Grattan had ; and as con- 
trasted even with O'Connell, who relied on the same 
methods, they have not the advantage he had in 
touching the sympathy of mankind in behalf of re- 




Fitzgerald. 
Davis. 



AGITATORS OF T1IK I'AST. 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 309 

ligious equality. Their task is more difficult : they 
address themselves to the intellect of a hostile power 
on an economic and social problem perplexing to all, 
unintelligible to many, and they must overcome with- 
out a battalion the army and navy of that vast empire 
whose " drum-beat is heard around the world," and 
whose colonial dependencies, excluding Ireland, cover 
a third of the surface of the globe and comprise a 
fourth of its inhabitants. The men who undertake a 
moral and political enterprise of such magnitude can- 
not be ignorant ruffians ; they must be more than 
'average men, well informed, sagacious, self-control- 
ling, patient, resolute, enlightened, self-sacrificing 
and prepared for incessant calumny. 

The founder and organizer of the Land League, 
Michael Davitt, is of peasant birth and self-educated. 
Indeed, it is probable, had not his family been evicted 
while he was a lad and compelled to seek in an Eng- 
lish manufactory the bread denied them in their na- 
tive land, that he would have been deprived of the 
chance of education which still another misfortune 
increased. He was born in Straide, County Mayo, 
in 1845 : those who saw him in this country would 
suppose him a much older man. He has been aged, 
not by time, but by the walls and cruelties of British 
prisons. A year or more after the eviction of his 
family from the farm which his father tilled he went 
with his parents to Haslingden, near Manchester, in 
Lancashire, and the extreme poverty to which they 
had been reduced made it necessary that he should 

18 



310 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

go to work ill the nearest cotton-factory. A whir- 
ring wheel caught the sleeve of his right arm ; in a 
moment the arm itself was so severely injured that 
amputation became necessary. No longer able to 
work at manual labor, in five years at a Wesleyan 
school, and still later at an institute, he laid the 
foundation of an education to which each succeed- 
ing year has contributed, even while in prison. At 
fifteen he was employed as bookkeeper and letter- 
carrier. A few years afterward he engaged in mer- 
cantile occupations and became a travelling agent for 
a house which sold arms. 

It was about this time that fanaticism threatened 
to burn the Catholic churches of Lancashire ; and 
Mr. Davitt, who was devoutly attached to his faith, 
led a defence-party which dispersed a mob in Has- 
lingden by firing over their heads, thus saving the 
church and doubtless many lives. Nearly ten years 
later, when he returned to Haslingden after his release 
from imprisonment, the people of the town went out 
e?i masse to welcome the " ticket-of-leave," and among 
those who greeted him most warmly were some of 
the men whom his intrepidity and coolness had re- 
strained from disgrace during that excited period. 

" Driven forth by poverty," says John Bright, 
" Irishmen emigrated in great numbers ; and in 
whatever part of the world an Irishman sets his 
foot, there stands a bitter, an implacable enemy of 
England." Another Englishman, Professor Cairnes, 
says : " Men leaving their country full of such bitter 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 311 

recollections would naturally not be forward to dis- 
seminate the most amiable idea respecting Irish land- 
lordism and the power which upholds it. I own I 
cannot wonder that a thirst for revenge should spring 
from such calamities ; that hatred, even undying 
hatred, for what they could not but regard as the 
cause and symbol of their misfortunes — English rule 
in Ireland — should possess the sufferers ; that it 
should grow into a passion, into a religion to be 
preached with fanatic zeal to their kindred and 
bequeathed to their posterity — perhaps not the 
less effectually that it happened to be their only 
legacy." 

That was the only legacy Michael Davitt carried 
from the eviction scene to the English factory. He 
did not nurse the brutal sight to inspire his manhood 
with a thirst for revenge, but he studied the social 
condition of the Irish peasantry for the purpose of 
discovering in what way, by what method, they 
might be emancipated from the slavery of land- 
lordism — a slavery deeper than any which the feu- 
dal barons had imposed on the meanest of their 
dependants, who, in exchange for labor or military 
service, were sure of protection ; meaner than the 
slavery in which the negro was held in the Southern 
States of the American Union. The black slave had 
food enough ; the Irish tenantry died, to the number 
of millions, of starvation. The black slave was in a 
climate which required little clothing, and he had 
enough ; the Irish tenantry have, perished in thou- 



312 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

sands from nakedness and exposure. The black 
slave always had shelter; the Irish tenants have 
been thrust by bayonets out of their cottages into 
the highways and left to die under the pitiless sky. 
The black slave had not the gnawing consciousness 
that his master's land was his land : he was born a 
slave ; the Irish tenant, even when he could not read, 
knew the traditions of the confiscations, and he en- 
dured the agony of believing that the land off which 
he was driven through no fault of his own belonged 
by right to his people and that he should have a 
share of its fruits. The slave's labor was confiscated 
by his master ; so was the labor of the Irish tenant. 
But the slave always had subsistence out of his 
labor ; the Irish tenant had not. Was it marvellous 
that while the sentiment of two continents was heated 
by the emancipation of the black slave in America 
the son of the evicted Irish tenant should dream of 
the emancipation of the Irish peasantry ? 

Success is the only thing in this life which defies 
criticism. Had the movement of forty years ago for 
the repeal of the legislative union succeeded, O'Con- 
nell would be deemed another Washington. The re- 
peal movement failed; criticism is glib with reasons 
for the failure. The rash and silly attempt of Robert 
Emmet, the too sanguine ardor of Tone, the enthu- 
siasts of '48, all failed, each failure doing Ireland 
some good by teaching the people patience and the 
strategy of incessantly worrying an enemy who can- 
not be fought. Had any of these episodes bloomed 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 313 

into successful revolution, criticism would apothe- 
osize those whose failure it derides. Fenianism failed 
— not utterly, indeed, for it taught the people three 
lessons : the folly of premature attempts, the cruelty 
of wasting precious lives and blasting happy homes, 
the worthlessness of sublime sacrifices for Ireland 
made on the scaffolds of Great Britain. But when 
its ranks were first formed it attracted many a young 
Irishman whose heart was full of fire, whose head 
was hot with the memory of personal and national 
wrong; and it is not surprising that -Michael Davitt, 
one-armed but otherwise strong and able to do a 
man's part, should have become a member of the 
organization. That he ever committed any act of 
treason need not be denied : he never had the op- 
portunity. But the spy and the informer were at 
work ; it was true that he attended secret meetings. 
He was arrested in London in 1870; the infamous 
traitor Corydon was the witness against him. 

Had Davitt actually been guilty of the offence 
charged, he would have manfully avowed it at the 
bar, as did Emmet, as did Mackey. A man who 
joins an organization avowedly revolutionary is pre- 
pared to accept the consequences of his conduct ; and 
the Irish revolutionists, if impracticables sometimes, 
have never been cowards. Corydon swore that he 
had been at several meetings where Davitt was pres- 
ent, and had heard him arrange the plans for the cap- 
ture of Chester Castle ; Davitt declared on oath that 
he was not at the meetings described by Corydon, 



314 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

whose perjuries in relation to others were already 
exposed; but the government was bound to convict,' 
with or without testimony, and Davitt was sentenced 
to penal servitude for fifteen years. John Wilson, an 
Englishman, who was not connected in any manner 
w T ith the organization, and was wholly innocent even 
of treasonable intentions, was found suspiciously in 
Davitt's company, and was sentenced with him. 
Knowing his innocence and feeling deeply the pain- 
ful situation in which Wilson's family would be left, 
Davitt arose and addressed the court in his behalf. 
He affirmed Wilson's innocence, and, finding that of 
no avail, asked that the Englishman's sentence be 
added to his own, that he might be spared to his 
family. His appeal was not wholly unheeded : Wil- 
son's sentence was lightened. 

An incident which occurred just when his trial was 
about to begin, and which illustrates the disposition 
of the British government to be fair to Irish political 
prisoners, deserves to be reproduced here : " A few 
days previous to being committed for trial I drew up 
instructions for my solicitor as to the mode of my 
defence, and this I had done in exact accordance 
with the rules suspended in my cell ; which rules also 
specified that such instructions could be handed by 
prisoners to their legal advisers without previous in- 
spection by the governor or other prison officials. 
When my solicitor's clerk visited me for the purpose 
of receiving those instructions, I handed him the en- 
velope containing them in the presence of the warder 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 315 

who presided at the interview, and who had brought 
• me from my cell to the visitors' or solicitors' room. 
Two days afterward I was again visited by my solicit- 
or's clerk, and astounded to hear that the governor 
had demanded my letter after the previous visit, as 
the officer had reported that he saw me draw a plan 
of the prison upon a piece of paper and give the same 
to the clerk ! When I saw the governor on the fol- 
lowing morning I demanded an explanation of this 
strange proceeding, and had to remain satisfied with 
being told that it was the officer's fault, and that if I 
had no objection to his (the governor's) reading my 
letter it would be given to my solicitor. I replied 
that I had not the least objection, owing to what the 
officer had reported, but that I protested against the 
whole proceeding as unfair and directly opposed to 
the rules hung up in my cell. Now mark what tran- 
spired within those two days. A sensational par- 
agraph had appeared in one of the London dailies an- 
nouncing that another plot had been discovered to 
blow up the house of detention, and that on this oc- 
casion it would be attempted from within the prison. 
It is unnecessary to say what effect this would have 
upon the public mind and how small the chance would 
be of my obtaining an unprejudiced jury and an im- 
partial trial in London after this. Two great points 
had by this heartless canard been made against me : 
the plan of my defence had been discovered, and the 
public feeling directed adversely toward me by the re- 
port that I had intended to effect another explosion." 



3l6 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

Before citing any passage from Davitt's account 
of the treatment he received in prison it is proper to 
consider what manner of man the son of the evicted 
peasant had become. Of irreproachable character, 
without a vice or careless habit, his leisure had been 
wholly devoted to the cultivation of his mind. He 
had studied political economy thoroughly ; and it is 
a circumstance which has almost escaped attention 
that the principles he has laid down in the land-re- 
form agitation are those he imbibed from the works 
of English moral and social philosophers and polit- 
ical economists. We shall discover this when we 
reach his writings and speeches. He had studied 
the status and histoiy of the peasant-farmer on the 
Continent, and to do this more satisfactorily had ac- 
quired several languages. He is fond of music and 
poetry, and has written smooth and graceful verse. 
His industry had supplied him. with the comforts of 
life and with the means of indulging a refined taste. 
He had committed no crime ; he was only a political 
conspirator. To such a man what must have been 
the loathsome situation in which the barbarity of his 
jailers soon placed him ? Of tall, active figure, his 
face is pale, his features regular, his head large, well 
shaped and intellectual, his eyes, hair and beard dark. 
He impresses one as being reserved, passionate and 
obstinate. He speaks flowingly, using excellent dic- 
tion, and when in public discussion exhibits a strong, 
homely, rugged and compact style, never employing 
mere rhetoric, never failing to make himself under- 




{Reverse of Medal.) 
THE LAND LEAGUE BADGE AND MEDAL. 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 319 

stood. His voice is clear, but not powerful ; his 
gesticulation scant, but appropriate. His speeches 
are uniform in their solidity and simplicity of struc- 
ture. In private intercourse he is modest, courteous 
and refined, slightly given to humor at times ; but 
his habit of thought is essentially serious. Unmar- 
ried, his devotion to the peasantry of his country is 
absolute ; he has no aim but their emancipation, and 
in consecrating his life to this he makes a self-sac- 
rifice whose completeness is as apparent as, its motive 
is pure. It is a sacrifice which hopelessly excludes 
human reward. His only compensation thus far has 
been to spend nearly ten of the best years of his life 
in prison. 

He is writing of Millbank prison : " A description 
of the cells, together with an account of the daily 
routine and work that had to be done, will suffice to 
form some idea of what punishment has to be borne 
in what is termed 'probation class.' The cells are 
some nine or ten feet long by about eight wide, stone 
floor, bare whitewashed walls, with neither table nor 
stool, and of course with no fire to warm by its cheer- 
ful glow the oppressing chilliness of such a place. 
My bedstead was made of three planks laid parallel 
to each other at the end of the cell and raised from 
the stone floor but three inches at the foot and six at 
the head of this truly low couch. The only seat al- 
lowed me was a bucket which contained the water 
supplied me for washing purposes, this bucket having 
a cover, so as to answer the double purpose of water- 



320 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

holder and stool. The height of this sole article of 
furniture allowed me was fourteen inches exactly, in- 
cluding the lid, and on this ' repentance-stool ' I was 
compelled to sit at work ten hours at least each day 
for ten months. 

" The punishment this entails upon a tall man can 
be easily conceived. The recumbent posture and bent 
chest necessary while picking oakum, with nothing to 
lean one's back against to obtain a momentary relief, 
is distressing in the extreme. The effect upon me, in 
addition to inducing a weakness in my chest, was sin- 
gular, but not surprising. 

" On entering Millbank my height was exactly six 
feet, as measured by the prison standard for that pur- 
pose; but on my departure for Dartmoor, ten months 
after, I had illustrated the saying that some people 
can grow downward, for I then measured but five 
feet ten and a half inches. 

" The bedding supplied was miserably insufficient 
during the winter months ; and owing to this and 
the sitting posture during the day, with feet resting 
upon cold flags, with no fire and with a prohibition 
against walking in the cell, many prisoners have lost 
the use of their limbs from the effects of a Millbank 
winter. But one hour's exercise in the prison-yard 
was allowed each day, and that was forfeited if the 
weather proved unfavorable. Owing to my health 
beginning to break down, I was permitted an extra 
half-hour's exercise after I had been eight months in 
the prison. This was granted by the doctor's order. 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 32 1 

" I had to rise at six each morning, fold up my bed 
very neatly, and afterward wash and scrub my cell- 
floor quite clean with brush and stone used for that 
purpose. This washing and scrubbing was, I need 
scarcely remark, very distressing upon me, owing to 
my physical infirmity ; but I was compelled to do it, 
nevertheless, once each day during the whole term 
of my imprisonment. After cells were cleaned in the 
manner I have described work was then commenced, 
and continued until a quarter to nine at night, allow- 
ing, of course, for meals, exercise, and prayers in 
chapel each morning. 

" The work I was put to in this prison was coir- 
and oakum-picking. I was not tasked, but had to 
sit working all day and pick a reasonable share of 
my coir or oakum, as the case might be. When I 
inquired, on being first ordered to this sort of work, 
how I could possibly do it with but a limited number 
of fingers at my disposal, I was told by the warder 
that he had known several ' blokes ' with but one 
hand who had managed to pick oakum very well 
with their teeth. As I declined to use my teeth to 
tear old ropes to pieces, I had to do the work as best 
I could. 

" During the whole of my stay in Millbank my 
conversation with prisoners — at the risk of being 
punished, of course — as also with warders and 
chaplains, would not occupy me twenty minutes to 
repeat could I collect all the scattered words spoken 
by me in the whole of that ten months. I recollect 



322 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

many weeks going by without my exchanging a word 
with a single human being. 

" The food allowed me for daily rations was as fol- 
lows : Breakfast, eight ounces of bread and three- 
quarters of a pint of cocoa ; dinner, four ounces of 
meat (including bone) four days a week, with six 
ounces of bread and a pound of potatoes ; one day 
in the week I was allowed a pint of shin-of-beef soup 
in lieu of meat, and on another one pound of suet- 
pudding ditto. Dinner on Sunday was twelve ounces 
of bread, four ounces of cheese and a pint of water, 
and for supper each night I received six ounces of 
bread and a pint of ' skilly,' containing — or rather 
supposed to contain — two ounces of oatmeal. 

" This was the ordinary prison allowance. 

"After subsisting for three months on this diet I 
applied to the doctor for a little more food, on the 
ground that I was losing weight owing to the insuf- 
ficiency of the quantity allowed; but my application 
was of no avail. 

" The books supplied me while in Millbank were 
almost exclusively religious, and but one library- 
book was allowed to each prisoner in a fortnight. 

" I asked to have mine changed once a week, but 
was promptly told I could not be favored beyond 
other prisoners. The class of books supplied to the 
Catholic prisoners was such as would be suitable to 
children or people ignorant of the truths of the Cath- 
olic faith. 

" I had often no book to read but one that might 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 323 

answer the requirements of a child, such as the his- 
tory of 'naughty Fanny' or 'Grandmother Betty,' 
and like productions, which, though doubtless good 
in their way, were not what could lessen the dreary 
monotony of such an existence. 

" A circumstance in connection with the situation 
of Millbank may (taken with what I have already said 
on that prison) give some faint idea of what confine- 
ment there really means. Westminster Tower clock 
is not far distant from the penitentiary ; so that its 
every stroke is as distinctly heard in each cell as 
if it were situated in one of the prison-yards. At 
each quarter of an hour, day and night, it chimes a 
bar of the ' Old Hundredth,' and those solemn tones 
strike on the ears of the lonely listeners like the voice 
of some monster singing the funeral-dirge of Time. 

" Oft in the lonely watches of the night has it re- 
minded me of the number of strokes I was doomed 
to listen to, and of how slowly those minutes were 
creeping along. The weird chant of Westminster 
clock will ever haunt my memory and recall that 
period of my imprisonment when I first had to im- 
plore divine Providence to preserve my reason and 
save me from the madness which seemed inevitable, 
through mental and corporal tortures combined. 

" That human reason should give way under such 
adverse influences is not, I think, to be wondered at ; 
and many a still living wreck of manhood can refer 
to the silent system of Millbank and its pernicious 
surroundings as the cause of his debilitated mind. 



324 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

" It was here that Edward Duffy died, and where 
Richard Burke and Martin Hanly Carey were for a 
time oblivious of their sufferings from temporary in- 
sanity, and where Daniel Reddin was paralyzed. It 
was here where Thomas Ahern first showed symp- 
toms of madness, and was put in dark cells and 
strait-jacket for a 'test' as to the reality of these 
symptoms. Ten years have passed their long and 
silent courses since then, but that same Thomas 
Ahern is still a prisoner and his mind is still tot- 
tering on the brink of insanity. I have anxiously 
watched him drifting toward this fate for the past 
six years, unable to render him any assistance, and 
I can predict that if he is not soon liberated he will 
exchange Dartmoor for Broadmoor lunatic prison, 
like so many other victims of penal servitude." 

From Millbank, Mr. Davitt was transferred to 
Dartmoor, in the barren Devonshire moors ; he was 
detained there six years and six months. An ex- 
tract from his account of the treatment he received 
there will serve as a description of the boasted Eng- 
lish prison system : 

" So much attention having been directed to these 
veritable iron cages by the exposure of poor McCar- 
thy's treatment and his confinement in such cells, I 
purpose giving an accurate description of them, and 
removing any doubts, if such exist, as to the account 
already given of their size, construction and venti- 
lation. The dimensions of one of them will answer 
for that of the whole, as they are uniform in almost 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 325 

every respect. Length, seven feet exactly; width, 
four feet ; and height, seven feet one or two inches. 
The sides (or frames) of all are of corrugated iron, 
and the floor is a slate one. These cells are ranged 
in tiers or wards in the centre of a hall, the ti@*rs be- 
ing one above another, to the height of four wards, 
the floors of the three upper tiers of cells forming 
the ceilings or tops of those immediately beneath 
them. Each ward or tier contains in length forty- 
two cells, giving a total of one hundred and sixty- 
eight for one hall. The sole provision made for 
ventilating these cells is an opening of two and a 
half or three inches left at the bottom of each door. 
There is no opening into the external air from any 
of those cells in Dartmoor, and the air admitted into 
the hall has to traverse the width of the same to 
enter the hole under the cell-doors. In the cells on 
the first three tiers or wards there are about a dozen 
small perforations in the corner of each, for the es- 
cape of vitiated air; but in those on the top or fourth 
ward — or, speaking more confidently, in those on 
that ward in which I was located a portion of my 
time — there were no such perforations, no possible 
way of escape for foul air except where most of it 
entered as ' pure,' under the cell-door. In the heat 
of summer it was almost impossible to breathe in 
these top cells, so close and foul would the air be- 
come from the improper ventilation of the cells be- 
low, allowing the breathed air in each cell to mix 
with that in the hall and thus ascend to the top. 



326 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

" I on one occasion begged the governor of Dart- 
moor to remove me from such a situation, for the 
additional reason to those I have given that I had 
not sufficient light to read in the cell I was in ; but 
I begged in vain. I was, however, soon after re- 
moved to a lower tier, after foul eruptions began to 
break out upon my body through the impure air I 
had been breathing. It has been since denied by 
Chatham prison officials that Charles McCarthy 
ever slept with his bed across the inside of his 
cell-door in order to catch sufficient air to breathe. 
From my own experience I can fully believe the 
necessity of his doing so, as it was quite common 
in Dartmoor for prisoners to sleep with their heads 
toward the door for a similar reason; and I have 
often, in the summer season, done this myself, and 
had repeatedly to go on my knees and put my 
mouth to the bottom of the door for a little air. 

" The light admitted to those ordinary iron cells 
is scarcely sufficient to read by in the daytime ; and 
should a fog prevail, it would be impossible to read 
in half of them. The cells are fitted with a couple 
of plates of thick intransparent glass about eighteen 
inches long by six inches wide each, and the light 
is transmitted through this ' window ' from the hall, 
and not from the extern of the prison. I have often 
laid the length of my body on the cell-floor and 
placed my book under the door to catch sufficient 
light to read it. 

" The food in Dartmoor prison I found to be the 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 329 

very worst in quality and the filthiest in cooking of 
any of the other places I had been in. The quantity 
of daily rations was the same as in Millbank, with 
the difference of four ounces of bread more each day 
and one of meat less in the week. The quality, as I 
have already remarked, is inferior to that of any other 
prison ; but from about November till May it is sim- 
ply execrable, the potatoes being often unfit to eat 
and rotten cow-carrots occasionally substituted for 
other food. To find black beetles in soup, ' skilly,' 
bread and tea was quite a common occurrence ; and 
some idea can be formed of how hunger will recon- 
cile a man to look without disgust upon the most 
filthy objects in nature when I state as a fact that I 
have often discovered beetles in my food and have 
eaten it, after throwing them aside, without expe- 
riencing much revulsion of feeling at the sight of 
such loathsome animals in my victuals. Still, I have 
often come in from work weak with fatigue and hun- 
ger and found it impossible to eat the putrid meat or 
stinking soup supplied me for dinner, and had to re- 
turn to labor again after ' dining ' on six ounces of 
bad bread. 

" It was quite a common occurrence in Dartmoor 
for men to be reported and punished for eating can- 
dles, boot-oil, and other repulsive articles ; and, not- 
withstanding that a highly offensive smell is purposely 
given to prison-candles to prevent their being eaten 
instead of burned, men are driven by a system of 
half-starvation into an animal-like voracity, and any- 

19 



330 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

thing that a dog would eat is nowise repugnant to 
their taste. I have seen men eat old poultices found 
buried in heaps of rubbish I was assisting in carting 
away, and have seen bits of candle pulled out of the 
prison cesspool and eaten after the human soil was 
wiped off them ! 

" The labor I was first put to was stone-breaking, 
that being considered suitable work for non-able- 
bodied prisoners. I was put to this employment in 
a large shed, along with some eighty or ninety more 
prisoners ; but, my hand becoming blistered by the 
action of the hammer after I had broken stones for a 
week, I was unable to continue at that work, and was 
consequently put to what is termed ' cart-labor.' 
This sort of work is very general in Dartmoor, and 
I may as well give some description of it. 

" Eight men constitute a ' cart-party,' and have an 
officer over them armed with a staff if working with- 
in the prison-walls, and with a rifle and accompanied 
by an armed guard if employed outside. Each man 
in the cart-party is supplied with a collar, which is 
put over the head and passes from the right or left 
shoulder under the opposite arm, and is then hooked 
to the chain by means of which the cart is drawn 
about. The cart-party to which I was attached was 
employed in carting stones, coals, manure and rub- 
bish of all descriptions. In drawing the cart along 
each prisoner has to bend forward and pull with all 
his strength, or the warder who is driving will threat- 
en to ' run him in,' or report him for idleness. It 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 33 I 

was our work to supply all parts of the prison — 
workshops, officers' mess-room, cook-house, etc. — 
with coals, and I was often drawing these about in 
rain and sleet with no fire to warm or dry myself 
after a wetting. I was only a few months at this sort 
of work, as I met with a slight accident by a collar 
hurting the remnant of my right arm, and was in 
consequence of this excused from cart-labor by the 
doctor's order. I was again set to breaking gran- 
ite, and remained at that job during the winter of 
1870-71. 

" I may remark that in June, when I was first put 
to stone-breaking, I was employed in a shed, but dur- 
ing the winter I was compelled to work outside in the 
cold and damp, foggy weather. I was left at this 
work until spring, and was then removed to a task 
from the effects of which I believe I will never com- 
pletely recover. My health on entering prison was 
excellent, never having had any sickness at any pre- 
vious period of my life. The close confinement and 
insufficient food in Millbank had told, of course, on 
my constitution, though not to any very alarming 
extent ; but the task I was now put to laid the germs 
of the heart and lung disease I have since been suffer- 
ing from. This task was putrid-bone breaking. 

" On the brink of the prison cesspool, in which all 
the soil of the whole establishment is accumulated 
for manure, stands a small building, some twenty feet 
long by about ten broad, known as the ' bone-shed.' 
The floor of this shed is sunk some three feet lower 



33 2 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

than the ground outside, and is on a level with the 
pool which laves the wall of the building. All the 
bones accruing from the meat-supply of the prison 
were pounded into dust in this shed, and during the 
summer of 1872 (excepting five weeks spent in Ports- 
mouth prison) this was my employment. These bones 
have often lain putrefying for weeks in the broiling 
heat of the summer sun ere they were brought in to 
be broken. The stench arising from their decompo- 
sition, together with the noxious exhalations from 
the action of the sun's rays on the cesspool outside, 
no words could adequately express : it was a veritable 
charnel-house. It will be noted that I was at work 
outside the previous winter, and when the bright days 
and summer season came on I was put in a low shed 
to break putrefying bones. The number of prisoners 
at this work varied from thirty to six, and I may re- 
mark that the majority of these were what are termed 
' doctor's men,' or prisoners unable to perform the 
ordinary prison-labor. When all the bones would 
be pounded, we would then be employed in and 
around the cesspool mixing and carting manure, 
and at various other similar occupations. 

" I made application to both governor and doctor 
for removal from this bone-breaking to some more 
congenial task, but I would not be transferred to any 
other labor. After completing a term of my impris- 
onment which entitled me to a pint of tea in lieu of 
' skilly ' for breakfast, I was then removed to a hard- 
labor party, as, owing to my being an invalid, or 



THE GATHERERS OE THE CROP. 333 

* doctor's man,' I could not claim the privilege of this 
slight change in diet without becoming attached to 
some hard-labor party, invalids, or ' light-labor men,' 
not being allowed tea at any stage of their imprison- 
ment. I very willingly consented to a heavier task, 
in order to be removed from the abominable bone- 
shed, in which I had worked and sickened during the 
summer." 

When accused of subjecting Irish political prison- 
ers to exceptional hardship and personal indignities, 
the government officials have been vehement in their 
denials. But Mr. Davitt relates incidents in his prison 
experience whose loathsomeness renders them too 
offensive for republication; and the rank injustice of 
cruelty to him was so much the greater because he 
never violated a prison rule, however odious or oner- 
ous. In 1872 he was transferred to Portsmouth prison, 
where for a month he endured frightful suffering ; then 
he was taken back to Dartmoor. December 19, 1877, 
he was released on " ticket of leave " for the remain- 
ing portion of his sentence. 

Charles McCarthy, of whom he speaks, and several 
others were liberated soon afterward. When they 
reached Dublin, the delight of the people was man- 
ifested in wild street-demonstrations, in processions, 
public meetings, songs and speeches. It was clear 
that, if the government considered them felons, the 
populace deemed them heroes. At one of the pub- 
lic receptions tendered to them the following address 
was presented : 



334 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

"ADDRESS OF THE PEOPLE OF DUBLIN 

" To Messrs. Charles McCarthy, Thomas Chambers, 
John Patrick O'Brien a?id Michael Davitt, on their 
Release from Imprisonment, suffered for Ireland : 

" Fellow-Countrymen : We approach you, on 
your release from the sufferings which you have for 
many years so cheerfully and heroically borne for 
our country in the prisons of England, to offer you 
our warmest congratulations, to bid you, with all 
the fervor and affection of our hearts, welcome 
home to Ireland, and to thank you for your cou- 
rageous and uncompromising devotion to the na- 
tional cause. 

" Roman history reveres the tradition which tells 
of the heroic self-sacrifice of the patriot Marcus 
Curtius, who saved the city by casting himself into 
the yawning abyss opened in the Forum. With a 
self-denying patriotism equal to his you have made 
an offering of life, fortune and liberty on the altar 
of your country ; and if by such sacrifices as yours 
her freedom has not been achieved, her honor has 
been saved, the manhood of her sons vindicated and 
a fund of public virtue created amongst us which 
will yet redeem and regenerate the land. 

" Mindful of this, and of all the horrors of penal 
servitude through which you have been condemned 
to pass, the capital of your country rejoices in your 
liberation to-day, and stretches forth its hand to re- 
ceive you with delight and gratitude. 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 335 

" The pleasure which we feel, however, is dimin- 
ished by the recollection that some of your brave 
companions are still held in captivity, and we cannot 
conclude without expressing the hope that they too 
may soon be restored to liberty. 

" Wishing you every blessing and prosperity in 
the future, and assuring you of the gratitude of all 
your countrymen, we again say to you from our in- 
most hearts, Cead Mille Failthe. 

" Signed on behalf of Reception Committee : 
Charles S. Parnell, M. P., J. G. Biggar, M. P., John 
O'Sullivan, John Dillon, J. Taafe, Patrick Egan; 
Treasurer, James Carey ; Hon. Secretary, Thomas 
Brennan; John Burns, Robert Woodward, R. J. Don- 
nelly, Daniel Curley, Edmund Hayes, J. Brady." 

Mr. McCarthy died two days afterward from the 
effects of the brutal treatment inflicted on him in an 
English model " reformatory " prison. He was buried 
in Glasnevin, and sixty thousand persons followed his 
remains to the grave, their tears for the death of a 
gentle and noble soul mingling with their execrations 
of the government which had killed him by slow 
torture. 

Mr. Davitt visited various parts of Ireland and 
was received everywhere with popular welcome, bon- 
fires blazing on the hills to announce his presence in 
a neighborhood. This circumstance inspired Mr. 
Lowther, chief secretary, to tell the Irish people a 
year later, when the fuel was scarce in the West of 



336 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

Ireland, that " they could find plenty of turf to give 
bonfire receptions to an ex-convict." 

When Mr. Davitt visited London he was received 
in Parliament by Mr. Parnell and other Irish mem- 
bers, and devoted his time there to securing the re- 
lease of the political prisoners still detained. Just 
at what period he resolved upon organizing the Irish 
people for land reform is not known ; he had thought 
upon it for years; and if the recollections of his own 
family history and his observation of the wretched 
state of the peasantry in general had not awakened 
the determination in his mind, his reading of John 
Bright, Richard Cobden, John Stuart Mill, Mr. Glad- 
stone, and other English statesmen and economists, 
could not have failed to do so. 

He sailed for America in 1878, and was soon in 
consultation with the exiled Irish nationalists. Chief 
among these were Mr. John Devoy and Mr. James 
J. Breslin. After frequent meetings to devise a plan 
by which the energy of the Irish people in both 
countries should be effectively put to work for the 
emancipation of the peasantry, they drew up and 
transmitted to the Irish members of Parliament the 
following proposition (it was the original formulation 
of the now historic movement to recover the land of 
Ireland for the Irish people and to establish there 
peasant proprietary) : 

" First. Abandonment of the federal demand, and 
substitution of a general declaration in favor of self- 
government. 



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THE DEFEAT OF OBSTRUCTION IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
Removal of Mr. Parnell by order of the Speaker. 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 339 

" Second. Vigorous agitation of the land question 
on the basis of a peasantry proprietary, while ac- 
cepting concessions tending to abolish arbitrary 
eviction. 

" Third. Exclusion of all sectarian issues from the 
platform. 

" Fourth. Irish members to vote together on all 
imperial and home questions, adopt an aggressive 
policy and energetically resist coercive legislation. 

" Fifth. Advocacy of all struggling nationalities, in 
the British empire and elsewhere." 

In a lecture in Boston, December 8, 1878, Mr. 
Davitt fully outlined the programme of new agita- 
tion : 

" First. The first and indispensable requisite in a 
representative of Ireland in the Parliament of Eng- 
land to be a public profession of his belief in the 
inalienable right of the Irish people to self-govern- 
ment, and recognition of the fact that want of self- 
government is the chief want of Ireland. 

" Second. An exclusive Irish representation with 
the view of exhibiting Ireland to the world in the 
light of her people's opinions and national aspira- 
tions, together with an uncompromising opposition 
to the government upon every prejudiced or coercive 
policy. 

" Third. A demand for the immediate improve- 
ment of the land system by such a thorough change 
as would prevent the peasantry of Ireland from be- 
ing its victims in the future, this change to form the 



340 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

preamble of a system of small proprietorships sim- 
ilar to what at present obtains in France, Belgium 
and Prussia, such land to be purchased or held di- 
rectly from the state. To ground this demand upon 
the reasonable fact that, as the land of Ireland for- 
merly belonged to the people (being but nominally 
held in trust for them by chiefs or heads of clans 
elected for that among other purposes), it is the duty 
of the government to give compensation to the land- 
lords for taking back that which was bestowed upon 
their progenitors after being stolen from the people, 
in order that the state can again become the custo- 
dian of the land for the people-owners. 

" Fourth. Legislation for the encouragement of 
Irish industries ; development of Ireland's natural re- 
sources ; substitution as much as practicable of cul- 
tivation for grazing ; reclamation of waste-lands ; 
protection of Irish fisheries and improvement of 
peasant dwellings. 

" Fifth. Assimilation of the county to the borough 
franchise, and reform of the grand-jury laws, as also 
those affecting convention in Ireland. 

" Sixth. A national solicitude on the question of 
education by vigorous efforts for improving and ad- 
vancing the same, together with every precaution to 
be taken against it being made an anti-national one. 

" Seventh. The right of the Irish people to carry 
arms." 

In a remarkable letter to a Dublin journal, Mr. 
John Devoy, representing the Irish revolutionists, 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 34 1 

gave their support to the new movement. He said 
touching the union of all Irishmen for the recovery 
of the land : 

" The object aimed at by the advanced national 
party — the recovery of Ireland's national independ- 
ence and the severance of all political connection 
with England — is one that would require the utmost 
efforts and the greatest sacrifices on the part of the 
whole Irish people. Unless the whole Irish people, 
or the great majority of them, undertake the task, 
and bend their whole energies to its accomplishment 
— unless the best intellect, the financial resources and 
the physical strength of the nation be enlisted in the 
effort — it can never be realized. Even with all these 
things in our favor the difficulties in our way would 
be enormous ; but if firmly united and ably led, we 
could overcome them, and the result achieved would 
be worth the sacrifice. I am not one of those who 
despair of Ireland's freedom, and am as much in 
favor of continuing the struggle to-day as some of 
those who talk loudest against constitutional agita- 
tion. • 

" I am convinced that the whole Irish people can 
be enlisted in an effort to free their native land, and 
that they have within themselves the power to over- 
come all obstacles in their way. I feel satisfied that 
Ireland could maintain her existence as an independ- 
ent nation, become a respectable power in Europe, 
provide comfortably for a large population within her 
borders, and rival England in commerce and man- 



34 2 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

ufactures. I contend she can never attain the devel- 
opment to which her geographical position, her nat- 
ural resources and the moral and intellectual gifts of 
her people entitle her without becoming complete 
mistress of her own destinies and severing the con- 
nection with England. But I am also convinced 
that one section of the people alone can never win 
independence, and no political party, no matter how 
devoted or determined, can ever win the support of 
the whole people if they never come before the pub- 
lic and take no part in the every-day life of the coun- 
try. I have often said it before, and I repeat it now 
again, that a mere conspiracy will never free Ireland. 
I am not arguing against conspiracy, but only point- 
ing out the necessity of Irish nationalists taking what- 
ever public action for the advancement of the national 
cause they may find within their reach — such action 
as will place the aims and objects of the national 
party in a more favorable light before the world and 
help to win the support of the whole Irish people. 

" No party or combination of parties in Ireland 
can ever hope to^in the support of the majority of 
the people except it honestly proposes a radical re- 
form of the land system. No matter what may be 
said in favor of individual landlords, the whole sys- 
tem was founded on robbery and fraud and has been 
perpetuated by cruelty, injustice, extortion and hatred 
of the people. The men who got small farms in the 
times of confiscation settled down in the country, 
and their descendants, no matter what their political 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 343 

party, are now ' bone of our bone ' — have become 
Irish — and perform a useful function in the land. 
No one thinks of disturbing them. If the landlords 
had become Irish and treated the people with hu- 
manity, the original robbery might be forgiven, 
though a radical change in the tenure of land must 
come of itself some day ; but when, as a class, they 
have simply done England's work of rooting out the 
Irish people, when the history of landlordism is sim- 
ply a dark story of heartless cruelty, of artificial fam- 
ine, of evictions, of rags and squalid misery, there is 
no reason why we should forget that the system was 
forced upon us by England, and that the majority of 
the present landlords are the inheritors of the robber- 
horde sent over by Elizabeth and James I., by Crom- 
well and William of Orange, to garrison the country 
for England. It is the interest of Ireland that the 
land should be owned by those who till the soil, and 
this could be reached without even inflicting hard- 
ship on those who deserve no leniency at the hands 
of the Irish people. A solution of the land question 
has been reached, to a large extent, in France, in 
Prussia and in Belgium, by enabling the occupiers 
to purchase their holdings. Let the Irish landlords 
be given a last chance of settling the Irish land ques- 
tion amicably in this manner, or wait for a solution 
in which they shall have no part. Let a beginning 
be made with the absentees, the English lords and 
the London companies who hold stolen land in Ire- 
land, and there will be enough of work for some years 



344 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

to come. Let evictions be stopped at all hazards and 
the rooting-out process come to an end. But I shall 
be told the English Parliament will never do any of 
these things. Then, I say, these things must only 
wait till an Irish Parliament can do them better ; but 
in the mean time sound principles will have been 
inculcated and the country will be aroused. 

" To those who are alarmed at language like this 
in regard to the land question I would say, Look at 
France, at Prussia and at Belgium, and you will find 
that the secret of their prosperity lies in the number 
of tillers of the soil who own their holdings. Listen 
to the mutterings of the coming storm in England, 
and ask yourselves what is going to become of the 
land monopoly after a few more years of commercial 
and manufacturing depression — a depression sure to 
continue, because the causes of it are on the increase. 
The English are a very practical and a very selfish 
people, and will not let any fine sentiment stand in 
the way when they think it is their interest to redis- 
tribute the land. What, may I ask, would become 
of the Irish landlords — especially the rack-renting, 
evicting ones — in case of a social convulsion in Eng- 
land ? It is a question* which they themselves must 
decide within the next few years. With them or 
without them, the question will be settled before 
long, and many who now think the foregoing as- 
sertions extravagant will consider them very mod- 
erate indeed by and by." 

Meanwhile, the proposition sent over by Mr. 



THE GATHERERS OE THE CROP. 345 

Davitt and the Irish nationalists in America had 
reached its destination. It was received by the 
Home-Rule party, of which the patriot Irish mem- 
bers of the British Parliament were the leaders, and 
foremost among these was Charles Stewart Parnell. 
The Parnells were originally English. As we saw in 
the chapter on " How the People lost their Land," 
some of the English who had obtained estates in 
Ireland from Elizabeth were driven off them by her 
successors, who wished to distribute the Irish soil to 
their own favorites or for their profit, and many of 
the earlier English colonists had become so attached 
to their new home and the genial and kind-hearted 
people around them that they were " more Irish than 
the Irish themselves." The English government 
viewed this with open alarm, and to prevent the 
commingling of the natives and the colonists for- 
bade, in severe penalty, all intercourse between them, 
and even confiscated the lands of any Englishman 
who married an Irish wife. The beauty of the Irish- 
women and their virtues won the heart of more than 
one English aristocrat, who sacrificed his fortune to 
his love. It was the statute making an outlaw of the 
Englishman who married an Irishwoman that fur- 
nished Thomas d'Arcy McGee with the subject of 
his beautiful little poem " My Irish Wife : " 

" I knew the law forbade the banns ; 
I knew my king abhorred her race ; 
Who never bent before their clans 
Must bow before their ladies' grace. 



346 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

Take all my forfeited domain — 

I cannot wage with kinsmen strife — 

Take knightly gear and noble name, 
And I will keep my Irish wife." 

The estates which were confiscated for this and other 
offences against the English law were eagerly sought 
by English and Scotchmen, who, knowing the fer- 
tility of the soil, expected to become rich by its cul- 
tivation. Thomas Parnell of Cheshire bought one 
of these at the time of the Restoration, and then the 
family, which soon became "more Irish than the Irish 
themselves," was planted in the island. 

John Parnell had two sons, John and Thomas ; the 
first became a judge, the second a minister and a 
poet. The poem by which he is best known now is 
"The Hermit." The Parnells were and are Prot- 
estants. Thomas drew a handsome income from the 
Catholic Irish to whom he did not preach; as he had 
no congregation to speak of to preach to, he became 
an absentee, and spent much of his time in the lit- 
erary society of London. He was an intimate friend 
of Dean Swift, who used his once-powerful influence 
at the English court to advance the temporal interests 
of Thomas Parnell. 

John, the judge, married an Irish wife — her name 
was Anne Ward — but he was not outlawed on ac- 
count of it ; on the contrary, he was created a baronet 
in 1766. This Sir John Parnell had a son, Sir John, 
who was one of the patriots in the Irish Parliament 
a hundred years ago ; it is he of whom Cornwallis 



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MRS. DELIA TL T DOR STEWART I'ARNELL 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 349 

speaks in the chapter on " How the People lost their 
Parliament." His son, Sir Henry Parnell, became a 
member of the British Parliament after the destruc- 
tion of that of the Irish, and distinguished himself 
as a sympathizer with the miseries of his country- 
men. The brother of Sir Henry Parnell, William, a 
country gentleman, left a son named John Henry 
Parnell, who while travelling in America met Delia 
Tudor Stewart, daughter of Admiral Stewart, " Old 
Ironsides." A mutual attachment followed, and they 
were married in Grace church, New York, by Rev. 
Dr. Taylor. Charles Stewart Parnell is their son. 
He was born in 1846, at Avondale, Rathdrum, the 
estate which he now owns, and received his early 
education in England. Sickness compelled his family 
to bring him back to the milder air of his native land, 
and when he had fully recovered he was sent back 
again to England and placed under the care of a 
tutor to be prepared for Cambridge, at which he re- 
mained for two years. In 1 872 he visited the United 
States as a tourist. 

It is not strange that he felt little interest in the 
affairs of his country. His education and his social 
status had practically alienated him from home ; he 
did not imbibe Irish sentiments from his English 
schoolmasters, and he heard no impassioned argu- 
ment at Cambridge for the redress of Irish wrongs. 
English society has always been the deadliest foe of 
Irish nationalism. Had Swift spent less time in 
London he would have been a better Irishman ; for, 
20 



350 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

although he did much for the Irish tradesman and the 
Irish manufacturer, he was a religious bigot and as 
violently opposed to extending political privileges to 
four- fifths of the Irish people as he was bitter in his de- 
nunciation of the restrictive commercial laws, the chief 
victims of which in his time were the men of his own 
creed. London society tainted even Tom Moore, 
whose adulation of the aristocracy — who sneered at 
him as an Irish grocer's son — was so flunkeyish that 
Byron in pique wrote of him the never-forgotten taunt, 
" Tommy dearly loves a lord." 

The real basis of the enduring fame of Moore rests 
on his immortal Irish melodies, and for the resources 
upon which he drew for them he was indebted to a 
suggestion by Robert Emmet. Moore was not, how- 
ever, poisoned by the companionship of the enemies 
of his country. It is true that for the birthday of 
the prince of Wales he wrote "Our Prince's Day" 
to the air of " St. Patrick's Day," and even indited 
the line, 

" A curse on the minion who calls us disloyal," 

to ingratiate himself with the princelings and snobs 
who always constitute the convivial retinue of a king 
that is to be ; but he amply compensated for these triv- 
ial infidelities, and his verse was a valuable aid in 
winning for Ireland the sympathy and the pity of 
the generous in every part of the globe in which the 
love of rhythm and of melody exists. 

A still more remarkable instance of alienation is 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 35 I 

furnished in the person of the newest of the present 
generation of poets. When Sir Charles Gavan Duffy 
was on trial for loving his country — he was one of the 
patriots of '48 — among the treasonable articles read 
by the prosecution was an editorial clipped from the 
journal of which he was the conductor. It was a 
bold, powerful and persuasive denunciation of the 
government of England in Ireland, and it was enough, 
probably, to secure conviction at an earlier day and 
to send Duffy to the scaffold of Robert Emmet. But 
when the reading had been finished a quiet voice 
spoke from the ladies' gallery : " If that be treason, 
I am the culprit." The speaker was Lady Wilde, 
one of the most eloquent poets of that brilliant pe- 
riod, the mother of Oscar Wilde, who has become so 
English in London circles that in the recently-pub- 
lished first volume of his poems, whose pages are 
full of tears for the sorrows of other lands, the name 
of his own miserable country is not mentioned. 

English society had not Anglicized Charles Stewart 
Parnell. An incident which occurred in Manchester 
in 1867 had set him thinking. An attempt had been 
made by a small party of excited Irishmen to release 
from a prison-van as it rolled through the streets the 
Irish political prisoners enclosed in it. A musket- 
ball was fired into the lock of the door to open it. 
Three men, Allen, Larkin and O'Brien, were hung 
for the offence which George Washington commit- 
ted against the English Crown. They were tried for 
the murder of a policeman ; they were not guilty of 



352 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

that crime, but they were hanged because they were 
convicted of loving Ireland and of hating her brutal 
foe. The last words of each were " God save Ire- 
land !" These words rang in the ears of Charles 
Stewart Parnell until he studied the testimony and 
found that the Manchester three had been legally 
and judicially assassinated. The sombre hours of 
reflection which he bestowed on that episode changed 
the current of his thoughts ; henceforward they flowed 
toward his country. The elegant gentleman became 
the patriot ; the quiet and studious lover of the aes- 
thetic became the agitator. 

When the proposition which the Irish nationalists 
in New York sent to the Home Rulers reached them, 
Charles Stewart Parnell was the head of that party. 
He entered Parliament as a Home Ruler in 1875, 
member for Meath. The following description of 
the man and his manner is in the main correct ; but 
his experience in public speaking has made him much 
more effective and interesting than he was at the time 
of entrance upon a parliamentary career. It is taken 
from a London journal not friendly to the neighbor- 
ing country. It was written nearly three years ago : 

" ' If Parnell does not draw the rein,' remarked a 
friend to me the other day, ' the country will soon 
have to put him under lock and key.' It is not my 
intention to justify the observation or to discuss the 
anti-rent agitation in Ireland in any shape, but it seems 
to me that when a politician comes to be regarded by 
a great many people as a rather dangerous man — and 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 353 

there are a great many people of my friend's way of 
thinking — it is well the country should know some- 
thing about him. 

" Now for the man himself. I do not know that 
previous to 1875 either Ireland or England had ever 
heard of Mr. Parnell. His father was a quiet, unob- 
trusive man of no mark at all, except that he was 
once high sheriff for the county of Meath, in which 
the family property is situated. The first appearance 
of our friend on any stage was when he made his bow 
to the Speaker of the House of Commons in- April, 
1875, with the return for the county of Meath in his 
pocket. A tall, thin, fair, studious young man of nine 
and twenty at that time, nobody then suspected in him 
the future leader of a 'party of exasperation.' He had 
not long finished his studies at Cambridge, and pol- 
itics were practically an unknown field to him, his 
chief article of faith being ' Home Rule.' 

" That session, after the manner of most new mem- 
bers, Mr. Parnell was mute. He heard vote after vote 
of the estimates passed, and clause after clause of bills 
discussed in committee, and said not a word. The 
idea of obstruction was then as far from his mind as 
from, say, Admiral Edmonston's. The following ses- 
sion he began to find his feet and to interest himself 
in small details of estimates, and it seems to have 
been about this time, on his seeing the success which 
attended persistent criticism, that he thought of ob- 
struction. It was only by degrees, however, that the 
policy of obstruction was developed, and the House 



354 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

itself is, perhaps, in some degree responsible for it. 
Everybody knows that the House, or rather the min- 
isterial portion of it, is somewhat impatient of crit- 
icism, especially of persistent criticism, of the esti- 
mates. Dillwyn, Whitwell and a few others have a 
sort of prescriptive right to make the same remarks 
and ask the same questions year after year; but no 
sooner does any new member betray a disposition to 
pry into the secrets of the public purse than the me- 
chanical majority proceeds to sit on him after its own 
fashion. A hum of conversation arises as soon as the 
new man gets upon his legs. The new man, being 
under the impression that members are merely care- 
less, and not malicious, raises his voice ; the talkers 
raise theirs, till at length, if the trial of strength is 
continued long enough, the House is a perfect Babel 
of sound. This was Mr. Parnell's experience. 

" Now, few men have the temerity to brave the 
House of Commons. Ninety-nine members out of 
a hundred, finding that they cannot get a hearing, are 
content to accept the inevitable. Not so Mr. Parnell. 
Under a slim and almost effeminate exterior he has 
an iron will. He refused to be put down. The more 
the House would not listen, the more he would talk, 
even although he could not be heard more than a 
couple of benches off, and his persistence gradually 
attracted the support of the sympathetic Biggar and 
one or two kindred spirits in the same direction, who 
looked upon him as an Irish martyr. By and by he 
began to retaliate by talking when he had nothing to 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 355 

say, and so during the sessions of 1877 and 1878 the 
merits of obstruction as an engine for extorting con- 
cessions from the government gradually dawned upon 
him and his faithful adherents, whose appearance in 
the character of financial and administrative critics 
the House resented in pretty much the same way as 
his own. 

" Perhaps had Mr. Parnell possessed in some de- 
gree the oratorical faculty, the House would have 
treated him more kindly ; but he has a harsh, mo- 
notonous voice which at once destroys all sympathy 
between him and his hearers, and his manner is stiff 
and, so to speak, wooden. Since he has been in Par- 
liament he has never, so far as I recollect, spoken 
upon any question of general politics excepting flog- 
ging, and that he took up more, perhaps, for obstruct- 
ive purposes than on conscientious grounds. 

" I have spoken of Mr. Parnell's personal appear- 
ance. He is a standing wonder even to his friends. 
Calm, cool, bloodless, he is a man whom nothing can 
move. O'Connor Power grows savage under the exas- 
perating treatment of the House and O'Donnell hisses 
his words through his teeth with ill-disguised resent- 
ment, but Parnell remains invariably imperturbable. 
A contest between him and the House is a comedy in 
itself. 'Mr. Speaker,' says Mr. Parnell, rising to his 
feet, amid overpowering cries of ''Vide! Vide!' Then 
comes a lull, in which Mr. Parnell edges in the words, 
' Mr. Speaker, sir.' Here there is a renewed chorus 
of voices, on the subsiding of which Mr. Parnell ut- 



35^ THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

ters the words ' I rise,' which are followed by another 
outburst. In this way he contrives, bit by bit, to pro- 
ceed with his speech, the House unconsciously serv- 
ing his purpose by forcing him to pause at every word. 
Though a man of this resolute and unbending stamp, 
he has in personal intercourse the mildest and most 
gentle manner conceivable. He is almost womanly, 
and Sir Wilfrid Lawson has long since noted that he 
is an inveterate water-drinker. 

" There is a belief abroad that Parnell is a wealthy 
man. This is a mistake. His property does not bring 
him in more than fifteen hundred pounds a year, and, 
true to the principles he has recently been preaching 
up and down Ireland, he has within the past few 
weeks reduced his own rents some twenty per cent. 

" It is a question of some importance how a man 
of this stamp stands in popular estimation. From in- 
quiries I have made, I am convinced that Mr. Parnell 
is at present the most popular man in Ireland. He is 
almost worshipped by the masses." 

The third of those popularly recognized as the 
leaders of the Land League is John Dillon. In 
1866, John Bright — whose repeated expressions of 
sympathy with Ireland on the floor of the House of 
Commons had endeared him to a people who should 
have learned from cruel disappointments that the 
opinions of a man out of office may be very different 
from the opinions of the same man in office — was 
invited to a public banquet in Dublin. Twenty-two 
members of the House of Commons from Ireland 





MF.DAI. AWARDED COMMODORE CHARLES STEWART, U.S.N. 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 359 

had signed the invitation. In his speech at the ban- 
quet John Bright said : " I speak with grief when I 
say that one of our friends who signed that invi- 
tation is no longer with us. I had not the pleasure 
of a long acquaintance with Mr. Dillon, but I shall 
take this opportunity of saying that during the last 
session of Parliament I formed a very high opinion 
of his character. There was that in his eye and in 
the tone of his voice — in his manner altogether — 
which marked him for an honorable and a just 
man. ... I believe, amongst all her worthy sons, 
Ireland has had no worthier and nobler son than 
John Blake Dillon." 

The man thus justly characterized was adjudged 
by the English government fit only to be hung or 
banished, for John Blake Dillon was one of the 
" Young Ireland " party of '48, and when its aspira- 
tions had grown too bold for the English govern- 
ment it sought to wreak the same vengeance on the 
leaders which had been inflicted on all their pred- 
ecessors in that cause. 

John Blake Dillon escaped to this country, and 
was fir a time the law-partner of Richard O'Gor- 
man, also a rebel and recently elected judge of the 
superior court in New York. Mr. Dillon returned 
to Ireland, and was elected to Parliament by the 
same constituency which his son now represents. 

Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, who had the best means 
of knowing him intimately, as he furnished much of 
the brains of The Nation, of which Sir Charles was 



360 THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 

editor, says of him : " He was tall and strikingly 
handsome, with eyes like a thoughtful woman's, and 
the clear olive complexion and stately bearing of a 
Spanish noble. His generous nature made him more 
of a philanthropist than a politician. . . . Codes, ten- 
ures and social theories were his familiar reading. 
. . . He followed in the track of Bentham and De 
Tocqueville, and recognized a regulated democracy 
as the rightful ruler of the world ; and he saw with 
burning impatience the wrongs inflicted on the in- 
dustrious poor by an aristocracy practically irre- 
sponsible. . . . He was grave with the sweet gravity 
which comes from habitual thought. . . . Thackeray 
assured me in later years that among the half-dozen 
men in the United States whom he loved to re- 
member the modesty and wholesome sweetness of 
Dillon, then a political refugee, gave him a foremost 
place. . . . Dillon was a man of remarkable talents 
carefully cultivated, of lofty purpose sustained by 
steady courage, and of as pure and generous a nature 
as ever was given to man." While a member of 
Parliament he was conspicuous for the zeal with 
which he sought to secure the attention g>f that 
body to the crying evils of Ireland, and his know- 
ledge of economic matters, especially in relation to 
land tenure, was frequently exhibited. It was on 
his motion that many of the " inquiries " were made 
which resulted in laying before both countries facts 
which hastened the day of land reform. He died 
in 1867. 



THE GATHERERS OF THE CROP. 36 1 

John Dillon, his son, studied in the Catholic Uni- 
versity of Dublin, and is a lawyer; his brother Wil- 
liam, who has also been active in the land move- 
ment, is a physician. The sons inherit their father's 
ability with his opinions ; John resembles him some- 
what in personal appearance. Of delicate health, he 
has had to struggle bravely to maintain vigor enough 
for the exhausting functions of a public orator to 
whom neither night nor day can bring assurance of 
repose. He speaks slowly, 'carefully choosing his 
words, and does not at first make a deep impression 
on those who see and hear him. But in a few min- 
utes the strength and tenacity of his thought be- 
comes apparent. He reveals the mind that has 
been studying its subject to the ultimate conclu- 
sions ; he does not tarry midway nor trifle with the 
incidental to the neglect of the essential. He speaks 
with clearness, force and determination. He does 
not temporize or compromise in the course of an 
address, and never permits the logical end to get 
out of view. In private life he is a charming con- 
versationalist, never garrulous, but so well equipped 
with ideas that his conversation is at once interest- 
ing, informing and convincing without being in the 
least strenuous or persistent. 

Such are the men who are the recognized leaders 
of the land agitation in Ireland. Neither in their 
antecedents, in their associations, in their personal 
character nor in their ambition do they suggest the 
" ignorant ruffian." 



CHAPTER XI. 

A PEACEFUL AND CONSTITUTIONAL MOVE- 
MENT. 

THE Irish National Land League was founded 
October 21, 1879, in the Imperial hotel, Lower 
Sackville street, Dublin. The parliamentary Home- 
Rule party had accepted the proposition sent from 
America by the Irish nationalists, and upon that as 
a platform all divisions of Irishmen who wish for the 
good of their country united. The following is the 
official record of the first meeting: 

" The Rev. Father Behan, C. C, proposed, and 
Mr. Wm. Dillon, B. L., seconded, ' That an associa- 
tion be hereby formed, to be named " The Irish Na- 
tional Land League." ' 

" Proposed by Mr. W. Kelly, seconded by Mr. 
Thomas Roe : ' That the objects of the League are, 
first, to bring about a reduction of rack-rents ; second, 
to facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the soil 
by the occupant.' 

" Proposed by Mr. Parnell, M. P., seconded by the 
Rev. Father Sheehy, C. C. : ' That the objects of the 
League can be best attained by promoting organiza- 
tion among the tenant-farmers, by defending those 

362 



A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 363 

who may be threatened with eviction for refusing to 
pay unjust rents, by facilitating the working of the 
Bright clauses of the Land Act during the winter, 
and by obtaining such reform in the laws relating to 
land as will enable every tenant to become the owner 
of his holding by paying a fair rent for a limited num- 
ber of years.' 

" Proposed by Mr. John Sweetman, seconded by 
Mr. T. D. Sullivan: 'That Mr. Charles S. Parnell, 
M. P., be elected president of this League.' 

" Proposed by Mr. George Delany, seconded by 
Mr. W. H. Cobbe, Portarlington : ' That Mr. A. J. 
Kettle, Mr. Michael Davitt and Mr. Thomas Brennan 
be appointed honorary secretaries of the League.' 

" Proposed by Mr. Patrick Cummins, P. L. G., sec- 
onded by Mr. Laurence McCourt, P. L. G. : 'That 
Mr. J. G. Biggar, M. P., Mr. W. H. O'Sullivan, M. P., 
and Mr. Patrick Egan, be appointed treasurers.' 

" On the motion of the Rev. Father Sheehy, sec- 
onded by Mr. Michael Davitt, it was resolved ' That 
the president of this League, Mr. Parnell, be request- 
ed to proceed to America for the purpose of obtain- 
ing assistance from our exiled countrymen, and other 
sympathizers, for the objects for which this appeal is 
issued.' 

" Proposed by Mr. Thomas Ryan, seconded by 
Mr. J. F. Graham : ' That none of the funds of this 
League shall be used for the purchase of any land- 
lord's interests in the land, or for furthering the in- 
terests of any parliamentary candidate.' 



364 A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 

" Committee.-— Charles Stewart Parnell, M. P., Pres- 
ident, Avondale, Rathdrum ; P. O'Gorman, M. P., 
Waterford; John Ferguson, Glasgow; W. Quirke, 
P. P., dean of Cashel ; A. Cummins, LL.D., Liver- 
pool ; M. Harris, Ballinasloe; U. J. Canon Bourke, 
P. P., Claremorris; J. O'C. Power, M. P., London; 
Rev. J. Behan, Dublin ; Richard Lalor, Mountrath ; 
J. L. Finegan, M. P., London ; Rev. R. Sheehy, Kil- 
mallock ; J. J. Louden, B. L., Westport ; O'G. Mahon, 
M. P., London; John Dillon, Dublin; W. Joyce, P. P., 
Louisburgh, Mayo; N. Ennis, M. P., Claremount, 
Meath; T. Roe, Dundalk Democrat ; J. R. McClos- 
key, M. D., Derry; Geo. Delany, Dublin; T. D. 
Sullivan, Nation, Dublin ; J. Byrne, Wallstown Cas- 
tle, Cork ; J. E. Kenny, Dublin ; M. Marum, J. P., 
Ballyragget ; P. F. Johnston, Kanturk ; Rev. M. Tor- 
mey, Painstown, Beauparc ; T. Canon Doyle, P. P., 
Ramsgrange ; P. J. Moran, Finea, Granard ; O. J. 
Carraher, Cardestown, Louth ; J. White, P. P., Mill- 
town-Malbay ; P. Cummins, P. L. G., Rathmins ; J. 
Daly, P. L. G., Castlebar ; Rev. P. M. Furlong, New 
Ross; Thos. Ryan, Dublin; James Rourke, Dub- 
lin ; R. Kelly, Tnam Herald ; Wm. Dillon, Dublin ; 
I. J. Kennedy, T. C, Clonliffe Terrace, Dublin ; M. 
O' Flaherty, Dunoman Castle, Croom ; John Sweet- 
man, Kells; M. F. Madden, Clonmel; J. C. Howe, Lon- 
don ; T. Lynch, P. P., Painstown, Beauparc ; J. F. 
Grehan, P. L. G., Cabinteely, Dublin ; D. Brennan, 
P. P., Kilmacow, Kilkenny; W. Kelly, Donabate, 
Dublin; C. Reilly, Artane, Dublin; L. McCourt, 



A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 365 

P. L. G., Dublin; S. O'Mara, Limerick; Thos. Gre- 
han, Loughlinstown, Dublin ; Rev. M. K. Dunne, 
Enniscorthy ; M. J. Kenny, P. P., Scariff; R. H. 
Hedge, Athlumney House, Navan ; M. A. Conway, 
P. P., Skreen, Sligo. 

" Treasurers.— -W. H. O'Sullivan, M.P., Kilmallock; 
J. G. Biggar, M. P., Belfast; Patrick Egan, Dublin. 

" Honorary Secretaries. — A. J. Kettle, P. L. G., Ar- 
tane, Dublin; Michael Davitt, Dublin; Thomas 
Brennan, Dublin. 

"Committee Rooms, 62 Middle Abbey Street, Dublin." 

This record is presented in full for two reasons : 
to answer the charge that the conservative element 
in Ireland — the Catholic clergy — did not sympathize 
with the objects or approve of the methods of the 
Land League, and to establish the fundamental cha- 
racter of the League as it was defined in its official 
organization. The objects for which the League was 
organized were kept constantly in view from its in- 
ception until its attempted suppression by the Eng- 
lish government. These objects were strictly moral, 
humane and constitutional, and the methods em- 
ployed to accomplish them were peaceful and legal. 
The League was in active existence for two years 
when the English government suppressed it. It ac- 
complished these, at least, among its objects : 

1. A reduction of excessive rents. 

2. The protection of tenants evicted for not pay- 
ing excessive rents. 



366 A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 

3. It compelled the English government to pass a 
bill taking away from the Irish landlord for fifteen 
years the power arbitrarily to raise rents, or to evict 
when rents are paid according to the terms of the 
lease. 

It accomplished two objects not originally con- 
templated : it saved from death by famine hundreds 
of thousands of the Irish people during the winter 
and spring following its organization, and it blended 
all classes of the people of Ireland into a compact 
and homogeneous mass resolved to win by constitu- 
tional means the right of Ireland to make her own 
domestic laws on her own soil. 

So much has been written on this side the water 
about the hostility of the Catholic clergy, as well as 
of the ministers of Protestant denominations in Ire- ■ 
land, to the Land League, that a word may be said 
upon this subject. The complaint is made, on the 
one hand, against ecclesiastics entering into Irish 
politics at all, and, on the other, the most has been 
made by the English government of whatever hos- 
tility it could arouse among the religious elements 
against any popular movement with the ultimate 
object of compelling the foreign government in Ire- 
land to be more just to the people. Americans can- 
not understand why " the priest should be in politics " 
in Ireland any more than in this country, in whose 
party contests he never participates. It is undoubt- 
edly true that in Ireland, as in the United States, the 
clergyman would prefer to escape the embarrassment 



A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 369 

inseparable from such contests ; but it should not be 
forgotten that it has always been the policy of the 
English government in Ireland to foment religious 
dissensions there as a powerful means of perpet- 
uating its own domination. If the Catholics could 
be made odious and detestable to the Protestants, 
and if the Protestants could be made vicious and 
intolerant toward the Catholics, violent collisions, 
breaking the peace of the country, would inevitably 
ensue — as, indeed, they have ensued, to the discredit 
of all responsible for them. These collisions, endan- 
gering life and property, justified the foreign govern- 
ment inciting them in claiming that the Irish peo- 
ple are incapable of governing themselves, and must 
have strong government from abroad to make them 
respect the laws of the country. This has been a 
distinct feature of English government in Ireland 
since the Reformation. 

That it is wholly unwarranted by the facts of Irish 
history is indisputable. The first seed of these dis- 
sensions was sowed by the English government in 
the laws imposing dreadful penalties upon the Ro- 
man Catholics, who, as late as 1800, comprised seven- 
tenths of the population. The object of the penal 
laws, as already fully stated, was not to save the 
souls of the Irish people, but to get their lands, 
ruin their industries and reduce the country into a 
vast farm whose soil and products should be owned 
in England, and whose tenants should be patrons of 
the English manufacturer. That plan succeeded, and 

21 



370 A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 

to insure the permanence of its success the schools 
of the Catholics were destroyed and they were for- 
bidden to educate their children at home or to send 
them abroad for education. The only schools which 
existed in Ireland from the Reformation until a few 
years ago were schools in which the Creed of the 
Church of England was taught, and which all who 
attended them had to accept ; and, as the seven- 
tenths of the people could not in conscience send 
their children to them, they had to go without ed- 
ucation. These schools were conducted in some 
cases by sincere and benevolent persons who held 
the doctrines to be essential to the attainment of 
salvation ; in others by brutal and hypocritical dem- 
agogues who were especially obnoxious to the mass 
of the people. 

The system of tithes was also calculated to excite 
the deepest antipathy among the majority of the 
people. Every Irishman, whatever his real religious 
opinions, was required to contribute toward the sup- 
port of the foreign Church, whose ministers often 
had no congregations, but were in receipt of large 
incomes ; and it was lawful to seize and to sell the 
property of the Catholic, the Methodist, the Presby- 
terian or the Baptist to pay the tithes of the minister 
appointed by the state — one whose theology and per- 
son were alike offensive and detested. Is it any 
wonder that there should have been ill-will on the 
part of those who were its victims toward those who 
profited by this injustice ? Yet it was only ten years 



A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 37 1 

ago that the Irish people were relieved of the bur- 
den of maintaining this alien Church and each de- 
nomination left free to support the clergy it preferred. 
If there have been religious dissensions in Ireland, 
let the blame rest where it belongs. 

The special penalties of the laws being laid on the 
Catholics, they became poor, ignorant, timid ; and 
occasionally they arose in madness and by sudden 
and frenzied efforts — which were always crushed 
with the utmost cruelty — endeavored to throw off 
the yoke which held their necks to the ground. 
Sometimes the Protestants, stung to fury by the in- 
justice constantly visited upon their country, organ- 
ized secret revolution, arose, were put down, and the 
leaders who escaped the bayonet or the ball went 
to the scaffold. Robert Emmet's insurrection was a 
Protestant movement ; Wolfe Tone's conspiracy was 
a Protestant movement ; the threatened revolution of 
1782, which won the independence of the Irish Par- 
liament — only to lose it altogether eighteen years 
later — was a Protestant movement ; but in all these 
the Catholics cordially united with the Protestants 
and assisted them so far as their limited means al- 
lowed. Wolfe Tone declared that it was only the 
Catholics who were faithful to him to the end. It 
was inevitable that in the movement for parliament- 
ary independence a hundred years ago the leaders 
should be exclusively Protestant, because during a 
long preceding period the English government had 
shut out the Catholics from the right to be members 



372 A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 

or to vote for members. But the Catholics sub- 
scribed cordially to the volunteer fund, by which, 
no less than by the eloquence of Grattan, the vic- 
tory was won. 

The instinct of the patriotic people of Ireland of 
all creeds has been precisely what the instincts of all 
human beings are who have a common political ob- 
ject to accomplish — to unite for the accomplishment 
of that object. The politicians who have conducted 
the government of Ireland for the English man- 
ufacturer understand this, and they have always 
strenuously sought to arouse sectarian animosity 
and to perpetuate the miserable spirit of bigotry. 
For instance, during the time that Cornwallis and 
Castlereagh were endeavoring to abolish the Irish 
Parliament, they told the Protestants that if the act 
of legislative union did not pass the Catholics would 
obtain from the Irish Parliament the right to vote 
and to be members, and that then the Protestants 
would be persecuted and driven out of the country ; 
while, at the same time, they insidiously circulated 
the assurance among the Catholics that if they would 
favor the act of union they would be granted the 
political and civil rights enjoyed then only by the 
Protestants, who, as long as they controlled the Irish 
Parliament, would continue to exclude them from par- 
ticipation in the government of their country. Doubt- 
less many of the credulous on both sides believed 
these libels — gross libels, for the people were rapidly 
drawing together for the common good. Again, when 



A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 373 

O'Connell, twenty years later, was leading the agita- 
tion for Catholic emancipation, the Protestants were 
led to believe that if the agitation succeeded the as- 
cendency which they had so long enjoyed would be 
destroyed, and that, with, their new privileges, the 
Catholics would become so insolent that the lives 
and property of the Protestants would be endangered. 
Many even of the intelligent among them believed 
this calumny and opposed Catholic emancipation, 
thereby arousing the suspicion and dislike of the 
Catholics, who had worked so heartily with them to 
obtain parliamentary independence. The same argu- 
ments were employed against the proposition to 
abolish the State-Church and leave the people free 
to pay church assessments according to conscience ; 
the ten years that have passed since that event have 
proved that the assumption was false. 

The Orange society was established in Ireland — 
doubtless at English instigation — for the purpose of 
oppressing Catholics and dissenters and of perpetuat- 
ing foreign government in the country; yet so steady 
.was the inclination of all classes of the people to 
unite on a common political platform for the good 
of their country that the idea of running Daniel 
O'Connell for Parliament, and thereby forcing the 
English government into an encounter directly with 
the then almost solid and almost revolutionary body 
of the people, originated with a famous Orangeman, 
Sir David Roos, the high sheriff of Dublin. The 
petty conflicts which have occurred at various times 



374 A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 

since between mobs of different creeds have always 
been exaggerated for obvious effect, and, if the truth 
could be gotten at, were probably instigated by Eng- 
lish agents for the ultimate benefit of English tax- 
payers ; for Ireland pays much more than her right- 
ful proportion of the taxes of the empire. 

The Land League has been from the beginning 
formidable to the English government, because from 
the beginning all classes of the people, clergy and 
laity, have united on its platform. The " Young Ire- 
land " party of 1848 was the first national effort from 
which sectarianism was excluded, and of which the 
leaders were both Catholic and Protestant ; it was the 
noble songs of one of these — Thomas Davis, a Prot- 
estant — that sank deeply into the hearts of the Catholic 
people and inspired them with new determination to 
drive religious dissensions out of Ireland and despoil 
the English government of its sectarian quiver. The 
two peers of Davis, John Blake Dillon and Charles 
Gavan Duffy, were Catholics, and their superb prose 
supplemented the powerful verse of Davis. The aboli- 
tion of the State-Church and the placing of the clergy 
of all denominations on the same footing, so far, at 
least, as support was concerned, removed the im- 
passable barrier which had previously kept them 
apart; and when the Catholic Davitt and the Prot- 
estant Parnell united in the organization of the Land 
League, all classes of the people entered into the 
ranks, and the most truly national movement which 
Ireland has seen in recent times was under way. 



A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 375 

Clergymen of all creeds spoke on the same platform 
in advocacy of its objects and in approbation of its 
peaceful and legal methods, and some of the im- 
mediate results were that overwhelmingly Catholic 
parliamentary constituencies sent Protestant repre- 
sentatives to Westminster, while such eminent mem- 
bers of the Roman Catholic hierarchy as the vener- 
able and lately deceased patriot Archbishop MacHale 
of Tuam and Archbishop Croke of Cashel wrote and 
published strong letters of encouragement and en- 
dorsement of the League. Before it was in exist- 
ence a year a large majority of the clergy had be- 
come silent sympathizers or open advocates ; few held 
aloof. The archbishop of Dublin even assailed it ; he 
had certainly a right to his opinion — the same right 
as any other ecclesiastic or any other man. But while 
the English agents of the American press in London 
and Dublin were scrupulously careful to send over 
here, for the purpose of influencing American senti- 
ment, and especially Irish feeling, in this country, every 
word uttered by an individual ecclesiastic against the 
League, equal diligence was exercised in suppressing 
the constant utterances of other ecclesiastics in its 
support. The truth is that all elements of the pop- 
ulation of Ireland have been practically a unit for the 
objects of the League. The extreme nationalists sup- 
ported it as a step in the right direction, their judg- 
ment being expressed in the letter of Mr. John De- 
voy; the extreme conservatives supported it in the 
persons of so many of the clergy ; and the great body 



376 A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 

of the people supported it as a movement whose im- 
mediate purpose was moral, urgent and humane. The 
League was soon in operation throughout the coun- 
try. Branches were everywhere organized ; in a short 
time three hundred members were enrolled. A small 
weekly fee was paid by each, and this created a fund 
for the support of tenants who might be evicted for 
non-payment of rent, or whom the landlord cast into 
the highways for no cause whatever. 

The landlords found themselves in an entirely new 
position. Previously they had raised rents whenever 
they pleased, and had expelled rent-paying tenants 
whenever they pleased ; now they had to think before 
doing either. If they raised the rent and the tenant 
could not pay, they thrust him out without any com- 
pensation for the improvements he had made ; but 
they were surprised to find that their victim was 
promptly provided with shelter and necessaries for 
himself and his family, and they were still more sur- 
prised at the second consequence of the eviction : 
they could not rent the farm to a new tenant. The 
word had gone to the three hundred thousand, " Rent 
no farm from which a tenant who belongs to the 
League has been evicted." Formerly, so great was 
the competition for small farms that as soon as it 
was known that one was in the market enough ap- 
plicants appeared to keep rent up to the highest com- 
petitive figure. The consequence of eviction, after 
the Land League was organized, was not only to 
gradually induce a lowering of rents, but to keep 



A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. ^79 

idle the property of those landlords who evicted for 
failure to pay rack-rents. The League was the first 
antagonist the Irish landlord was compelled to re- 
spect. 

The entire body of the people were not, of course^ 
members of the League, and its word was not at first 
universally complied with. Then it endeavored to 
bring to reflection those who took the farms of the 
evicts : it forbade its members to have any social or 
business relations with them. This method of has- 
tening reform in land tenure proved highly effectual. 
When the patriots of America were engaged in driv- 
ing the English government out of their country in 
order that, after their expulsion, some of the benefits 
of the British constitution — of which so much had 
been heard and so little seen — might be secured, 
there was a class who believed that the Revolution 
could not succeed, and their cunning prompted them 
to remain loyalists. They were subjected to precisely 
the treatment which the Land League gave those 
persons in Ireland who remained servile to the 
landlords. The American patriots said in substance 
to the loyalists, " So long as you are perfectly neu- 
tral you shall not be molested ; the moment you 
give any countenance to the English we shall treat 
you as traitors." So the Land League said to those 
who opposed its peaceable campaign, " So long as 
you are perfectly neutral you shall not be molested ; 
the moment you aid landlordism we shall treat you 
as enemies of the people and of the country." 



380 A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 

The promise was fulfilled : the man who took a 
farm from which an evict had gone forth to subsist 
upon public charity was cut off from social inter- 
course. His neighbors would sell him nothing; they 
would buy nothing from him which they could get 
elsewhere or could do without. One now historic 
case soon attracted the attention of the entire coun- 
try — indeed, of the world. It was the case that sent 
a landlord's agent into the dictionary — a place to 
which he was quite a stranger. 

The approach of famine, with all the horrors which 
had followed in its ghastly train in '47 and the sub- 
sequent years, compelled the Land League to take 
prompt measures to save the lives of the people. 
The potato crop is an infallible guide to the con- 
dition of the Irish peasantry. In 1876 — a fair year 
— its value was over sixty million dollars; in 1877 
its value was twenty-five million dollars ; the next 
year it was thirty-five million; but in 1879 it shriv- 
elled to fifteen million dollars. That meant death to 
a million of the Irish tenantry. Whatever their little 
holdings had produced besides potatoes had gone to 
pay the previous year's rent. Now the crop that they 
depended on for food was also gone. The general 
crops had been poor throughout the country, and 
many of the tenants had not been able to pay their 
rents in full ; others were totally unable to pay ; and 
evictions increased as famine slowly crept after the 
trembling tenantry. In 1876 the evictions officially 
reported were one thousand two hundred and sixty- 



A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 38 1 

nine; in 1877 there were one thousand three hun- 
dred and twenty-three; in 1878 the number rose to 
one thousand seven hundred and forty-nine ; but the 
figures in 1879, thanks to the determined stand taken 
by the Land League, showed a diminution : the total 
was one thousand three hundred and forty-eight. 
The Land-League leaders saw that if the people 
who had the means to do so paid their rents in the 
autumn of 1879, they would swell the number of 
the possible famine-victims beyond the power of 
charity to save them from starvation ; and, as a 
man's first duty is to preserve his life and the lives 
of his family, the tenants were advised to hold back 
the rents if that was the only way by which they 
could escape starvation until spring. The Land 
League never taught the doctrine of no rent ; it 
never taught the doctrine so repeatedly practised 
by the English government — that of confiscation ; 
it never taught the doctrine of the abolition of 
private property. The proposition of the Land 
League was that of John Bright — that the land- 
lords should be bought out by the state, receiving 
fair prices for their lands, and that the state should 
sell to actual working tenants at fair prices and on 
reasonable time, holding a first lien on the lands 
until the purchase-money and interest were paid. 
There is nothing communistic or confiscatory in 
the entire history of the League. 

The advice to the tenants to withhold the rent as 
a means of saving the lives of their children and of 



382 A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 

themselves commends itself to every just mind; but 
the landlords were not disposed so to look upon it, 
and troops began pouring into the country to aid the 
landlords in enforcing rent-collections and in making 
evictions, although hundreds of the tenantry were al- 
ready in want. The notice to quit was soon pre- 
sented at many a cabin-door ; arrived with a revolver 
and backed by soldiery, the process-server forced his 
way into the bare and wretched cottage and thrust 
the fateful paper into the thin fingers of its outraged 
but helpless occupant. In 1846 no less than three 
hundred thousand starving human beings were thus 
expelled from their huts to die : they did die. Now 
note the difference in the results under the manly 
and stubborn menace of the Land League. In Oc- 
tober, 1879, Davitt said to the tenants, "If, to save 
your families from death, you must keep back the 
rent, keep it back ; you are bound before God to 
save them. You must not imagine that you will be 
turned out on the roadside to die, as your fathers 
were in '46. There is a spirit abroad in Ireland to- 
day that will not stand that a second time in a cen- 
tury." 

The words rang through the humble cabins and 
were listened to in the mansions of the landlords. 
The process-server was not from that moment in so 
great demand, although the country had been filled 
with English troops to force starvation and eviction. 
Davitt's menace was not misunderstood. It did not 
mean armed insurrection : there was not in all Ire- 



A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 383 

land a thousand rifles, probably, with which to make 
an attack on the whole army of the British empire. 
But there are methods which, under certain circum- 
stances, are more powerful than cannon — methods 
absolutely peaceful ; and those which the Land 
League had adopted were already in operation. 
No man would take a farm from a landlord who 
had evicted tenants who refused to pay rent, because 
they needed the money to save themselves from 
starvation, and no man would hold any social in- 
tercourse with those who violated this rule. Against 
three hundred thousand evictions in the former fam- 
ine year, we see thirteen hundred and forty-eight in 

1879. 

But it soon became apparent that the people would 
perish if money were not obtained to buy food for 
those who had neither money nor crop. Instead of 
coming promptly to the relief of the famishing, the 
government devoted its energies to breaking up the 
Land League, and in November, 1879, Michael 
Davitt and two of his associates were arrested. 
The government failed to make out a case against 
them, and, personal liberty not having yet been 
entirely abolished, they were released. 

Meanwhile, in accordance with instructions from 
the Land League, Charles Stewart Parnell and John 
Dillon sailed for the United States to enlist the sym- 
pathy of the American people and to solicit aid. 
They arrived January 2, 1880. They travelled 
speedily over the country, accompanied by Mr. 



384 A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 

John Murdock, the Highlander who has made so 
thorough a study of peasant proprietary, speaking 
in all the large cities and being received every- 
where with emphatic demonstrations of welcome. 
All classes of the people united in answering their 
appeals, and subscriptions amounting to over two 
hundred thousand dollars were placed in their 
hands. On February 2, Mr. Parnell was received 
by Congress while in session, and delivered an ad- 
mirable address setting forth the aims and hopes of 
the League and the miserable condition of the Irish 
country. It was his intention to form a Land League 
in the United States, but before he could do so he 
was summoned back to his seat in Parliament. He 
sailed on February 11, 1880. Mr. Dillon remained 
in the United States, continuing the work which he 
had been commissioned to do. 

After his release Mr. Davitt had been sent to 
France and Belgium to obtain assistance and come 
thence to the United States. After several prelim- 
inary meetings an American branch of the Irish 
National Land League was organized in New York, 
and branches were formed almost simultaneously 
throughout the country. The membership, includ- 
ing that of the ladies' leagues which were organized 
for charitable work by Miss Fanny Parnell, ably sus- 
tained by Mrs. Parnell and Miss Ellen Ford, is over 
three hundred thousand. The officers chosen at a 
national convention held in Buffalo are : president, 
Patrick A. Collins ; vice-president, Rev. Patrick 



A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 385 

Cronin ; secretary, Thomas Flatley ; treasurer, Rev. 
Lawrence Walsh. The objects of the League re- 
ceived the all but universal approbation of the clergy 
of the Catholic Church in the United States, and 
the public meetings held under the auspices of the 
League to raise money for those in danger of starv- 
ing were addressed by the most eminent of the hier- 
archy, while others appealed in pastoral letters di- 
rectly to their clergy and people, explaining clearly 
and eloquently the causes of the famine. 

Said Bishop Hennessy of Dubuque : " If the gov- 
ernment had sincere compassion on a suffering peo- 
ple and an honest desire to save them from the fate 
which was impending, would it in such an emer- 
gency, under pretext of law or any other pretext, 
become a party to landlord rapacity? Would it 
send its constabulary and military to distrain and 
eject, to tear down cabins and throw shivering chil- 
dren, their mothers and grandmothers, out on the 
highways in the depth of winter? Would it seize 
and carry off by force the crops and other chattels 
to which, through sheer necessity, without a thought 
of dishonesty, the poor farmer clung that he might 
have wherewith to keep the life in his little ones? 
Would it wrench the crust out of the hand of hunger 
that pampered tyranny might have the last penny of 
the rent? Conduct such as this betrays no pity. 
The aim of the British government is not to remove 
distress in Ireland, but rather to produce, aggravate 
and take advantage of it. To exterminate those 



386 A PEACEFUL MOVEMENT. 

whom it could not pervert was its manifest and 
avowed policy on the failure of the reformation. It 
is still the same, though not so openly. It is easy 
to see how it is going to work now. Famine will 
take some; its invariable attendant, pestilence, or 
sickness of some kind, will carry off still more ; and 
emigration will follow. The three will scour the 
land and scourge it and multiply sheep-walks. Did 
not the government foresee this? Others did who 
are not quite so keen-sighted. If not intended, why 
not prevented ? One per cent, of what it cost to rob 
and murder Afghans and Zulus in unjust wars, as 
worthless as they were wicked in the judgment even 
of Englishmen, soldiers and civilians, would have 
greatly improved Ireland and preserved her people. 
But to do this was not in the programme. The 
friends of Ireland, the trusted leaders of her people, 
will strive against emigration by argument and prom- 
ises and personal influence. I fear they will not suc- 
ceed to the extent of their wishes. Multitudes, espe- 
cially of the young, the vigorous, the ambitious, will 
not be induced, cannot be persuaded, to remain in a 
country where famine is periodical and misery per- 
petual, and this not by the accidents of fortune, but 
by the design of their rulers." 




HOW THE BOYCOTTS GOT THKIR HARVEST IN. 




LAN'M.LAGUFRS TILLING THE FARM OF AN IMPRISONED MEMBER. 



CHAPTER XII. 

A LANDLORD'S AGENT GOES INTO THE 
DICTIONAR Y. 

AMR. BOYCOTT, who had acquired, without 
getting it legitimately, the title of " Captain," 
was agent for Lord Erne, who had a large estate in 
Mayo upon which he did not reside. Captain Boy- 
cott was accustomed to rack-rent the tenants, to in- 
sult, humiliate and oppress them, and he was despised 
and feared. In addition to robbing them of every 
shilling he could extort as rent, he required the ten- 
ants to work for him at his own terms — a shilling 
and sixpence a day for the men, a shilling a day for 
the women — and to feed themselves. By a system 
of petty rules he contrived to reduce even this beg- 
garly pittance: a man was fined, for instance, so 
much if he walked on the grass, and so much more 
if he wheeled his barrow out of the path. The cap- 
tain was a ruffian in his manners toward the people, 
addressing them like dogs and compelling them to 
submit to galling personal affronts which poverty and 
dependence do not render any easier to human na- 
ture. He had repeatedly evicted the poor and re- 
peatedly robbed those whom he did not evict, and 

22 389 



390 FROM AGENCY TO DICTIONARY. 

during seventeen years' administration of Lord Erne's 
estate had earned the hatred and contempt of all who 
had tenant-relations with him. The Land League 
paid him some remarkable attentions. 

First, it commanded the tenants to refuse to pay 
him rack-rents. Secondly, it required the tenants to 
ask of him for harvesting his crops the same wages as 
were paid for that kind of labor by other landlords. 
The League terms were two shillings sixpence for 
the men, and one shilling sixpence for the women. 
Amazed at their audacity and furious over their im- 
pudence, he swore roundly that he would do nothing 
of the kind. Thereupon the tenants refused to har- 
vest his crops, and departed in a body. He proceed- 
ed into the adjoining localities, expecting to get all 
the help he wanted at a slight advance in wages; but 
he was mistaken : neither man, woman nor child 
would work for him upon any terms. Incredulous, 
he drove miles and miles, and was everywhere met 
with the same laconic response : " We won't." Times 
had indeed changed in Ireland ; the people did not 
even take their hats off to him — those who had hats 
— and before the Land League every man in Ire- 
land had to take his hat off to the landlord and keep 
it off while the petty tyrant drove along, even if the 
rain were descending. But nobody took off a hat to 
Captain Boycott, and neither he nor Lord Erne had 
money enough to buy a day's labor in Mayo or be- 
yond its borders. 

Chagrined and beside himself with rage, he deter- 



FROM AGENCY TO DICTIONARY. 39 1 

mined that his crops should be harvested if he had 
to do the work himself. He found that it was a more 
difficult task than he had anticipated — much more 
difficult than playing slave-driver to tenantry. Then 
he called upon his wife and daughters and servants 
to help him. The delicate palms of the ladies were 
soon blistered, but the crops were still unharvested. 
Surrender stared Captain Boycott in the face, but he 
did not give up like a man. Instead of acknowledg- 
ing the justice of the wages asked, he sent his wife 
down to the cabins to beg the Irish mothers to help 
her and her family out of their predicament, and the 
captain was willing to pay the terms the harvesters 
had asked. Then the crops were harvested. 

The captain nursed his wrath for rent-day. The 
famine had been in that part of the country ; the 
crops were poor for two seasons, and many of the 
people had been compelled to go over to England 
during the harvests and earn there, as laborers, mon- 
ey enough to keep them from starvation : they had 
none left. Many whose families had lived upon the 
generosity of the little shopkeepers had not enough to 
pay those debts and the arrears of rent, and they had 
hoped that, taking into account the failure of two 
seasons and their industrious efforts to repair their 
misfortunes, Captain Boycott would remit a portion 
of the arrears and reduce the rents for the next year. 
He would do neither one nor the other : whoever did 
not pay up in full must leave the estate. In that part 
of Ireland eviction means death, and the rumor that 



392 FROM AGENCY TO DICTIONARY. 

all who could not pay in full were to be turned into 
the roads and ditches flew like the news of an ap- 
proaching plague. 

It has been one of the privileges of the Irish land- 
lord to use law in ways denied other creditors. A 
shopkeeper could not serve a writ except upon the 
head of a family and in person, but a landlord could 
serve it on a woman in the house or nail it on the 
door if the woman would not let him in. Captain 
Boycott sent by the hands of process-servers notices 
of eviction, and as soon as one of these approached a 
cottage the woman of the house sent one of the chil- 
dren with a red petticoat to the nearest hill-top, where 
it was waved to give the other women notice that the 
obnoxious person was coming. The women of Mayo 
hurried to the scene, and by gibes, taunts, jokes and 
still more offensive means generally drove the em- 
issary of the law away from the cottage before he 
had either seen its inmates or reached the door with 
his hammer and nails. 

Then Captain Boycott secured the services of a 
hundred armed constables to protect the process- 
server, but no man could be induced to accept the 
latter office. The women had found out from a 
Land-League lawyer that nailing the notice on the 
door was not statute law, but landlord law ; that the 
notice must be served inside the house. The women 
determined to save the process-servers possible in- 
jury, and sent the message to the "big house" that 
they would leave the doors open and have plenty of 



FROM AGENCY TO DICTIONARY. 393 

boiling water on hand when the writs should arrive. 
No man in that part of Ireland was fond enough of 
boiling water to wish for it in such copious quanti- 
ties, and Captain Boycott did not even propose to 
serve the notices himself, although he had sworn 
they should be served. He determined to compel 
the government of the empire of Great Britain to use 
its army and navy, if necessary, to serve his eviction 
writs * and then the peasantry, under the direction 
of the Land League, prepared to fight the army and 
navy without other weapons than those of passive 
resistance. 

It was ordered that the captain and his family be 
let alone. The men who fed his stock left; the 
house-servants left ; no man, no woman, would work 
for him in any capacity ; the village shops civilly de- 
clined to furnish the necessaries which could be no 
longer prepared at the house. The tenantry would 
not have carried these measures to such extremes 
had he not deliberately calumniated them in the 
London papers, to which he wrote the gross un- 
truth that he was persecuted for being a Protestant. 
Neither he nor any of his family could buy at any 
price clothing, food, or any article for their use ; he 
had to feed and water his own cattle, and his wife 
and daughters were compelled to do the domestic 
work. This condition of things became intolerable, 
and at last Captain Boycott voluntarily left the 
country. 

While the passive siege was being carried on, 



394 FROM AGENCY TO DICTIONARY. 

James Redpath visited the parish priest, Father 
John O'Malley, who had kept up the courage of 
the tenants. During a frugal dinner the American 
paused and became pensive. 

" What is the matter?" asked the priest. 

" I am bothered about a word," was the reply of 
the American, who was preparing to send to a jour- 
nal at home an account of the novel proceedings. 

"' Ostracism/" said Father O'Malley, "will not 
do : the people would not understand that." After 
a moment's reflection he added with a smile, " How 
would it do to call it ' boycotting ' ?" 

In that way a landlord's agent went out of Ireland 
and went into the dictionary. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

DRIVEN FROM HOME BY FAMINE AND LAW. 



NO comment on the following figures can make 
them more eloquent than are their pathetic 
columns : 

Emigration from Ireland from 1841 to 1879, inclusive. 



1841 71,392 

1842 89,686 

1843 37,509 

1844 54,289 

1845 74,969 

1846 io5,955 

1847 215,444 

1848 178,159 

1849 214,425 

1850 209,054 

1S51 . 257,572 

1852 190,322 

1853 173,148 

1854 Ho,555 

1855 9i,9H 



1856 

1857 
1858 

1859 
i860 



90,781 
95,081 

64,337 
80,599 
84,621 



1861 64,292 

1862 70,117 

1863 117,229 

1864 114,169 

1865 101,495 

1866 99,466 

1867 80,624 

1868 61,018 

1869 66,568 

1870 74,855 

1871 71,240 

1872 78,102 

1873 90,149 

1874 73>i84 

1875 51,462 

1876 25,976 

1877 28,831 

1878 24,492 

1879 47,o65 



In the thirty years from 1840 to 1870 three mil- 

395 



396 



DRIVEN FROM HOME. 



lions of the Irish people were driven from home by 
the effects of foreign misgovernment. 
Well might Lady Wilde write : 

" A million a decade ! What does it mean ? 

A nation dying of inner decay ; 
A churchyard's silence where life has been, 

The base of the pyramid crumbling away ; 
A drift of men gone over the sea, 
A drift of the dead where men should be." 

While the Irish have thus been continually driven 
from home, the people of the other portions of the 
empire of Great Britain fcave increased and multi- 
plied. The following table presents the constant 
contrast of diminished population in Ireland and in- 
creased population in England, Scotland and Wales : 



Year. 


England and 
Wales. 


Scotland. 


Ireland. 


I8ll 

I82I 

183I 

1841 

1851 

l86l 

1871 


10,454,529 
12,172,664 
14,051,986 
16,035,198 
18,054,170 
20,228,497 
22,712,266 


1,881,044 

2,137,325 
2,405,610 
2,652,339 
2,922,362 
3,096,808 
3,360,018 


6,084,996 
6,869,544 

7,828,347 
8,196,597 
6,574,278 
5,798,967 
5,412,377 



The increase in England and Wales was 9,749,348, 
and in Scotland 1,060,600, in the same period during 
which Ireland lost more than three millions of the 
people. 

A government which produces such results is on 
them judged and condemned. 

It is frequently asserted that the cause of Irish 



DRIVEN FROM HOME. 399 

emigration is that the country cannot feed the pop- 
ulation. The truth is that the food which the soil 
produces is exported ; it is the property of the land- 
lord, to whose agents it is consigned, chiefly in Eng- 
lish seaports. Says Thorn's Directory (standard Brit- 
ish statistical publication), p. 675 : "-The exportation 
of the agricultural produce of the country has al- 
ways been the chief commercial business carried 
on in Ireland. During the Revolutionary war this 
country furnished a large share of the provisions for 
the army and navy, and it still sends supplies to the 
colonial markets. But Great Britain is by far the 
best and most extensive market for all sorts of Irish 
produce. By much the greater part of the export 
trade is carried on by the cross- Channel navigation, 
chiefly to Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow, the staple 
articles being black cattle, sheep, swine, salted pro- 
visions, grain, flour, butter, eggs and linen. 

That is, in the briefest possible terms, the com- 
plete explanation of Irish famine, Irish poverty and 
Irish emigration. The country produces enough 
food to feed many times its population — economists 
have even said as many as twenty times — for the 
soil is incomparably rich ; but the food is owned, 
not by the people who till the soil, but by the land- 
lords who hold the present title to it. They ex- 
port the food ; the people hunger, die or leave the 
country. 

The American will not fail to notice that the en- 
tire export trade consists of products of the soil, 



400 DRIVEN FROM HOME. 

with a single exception — linen, the one important 
manufacture of Ireland, whose material insignificance 
is shown in the chapter entitled " The Reason Ire- 
land has no Manufactures." Here we behold the 
success of the policy of England in Ireland for cen- 
turies — to make her a convenient market for the 
English manufacturer. She has nothing to send 
out but the products of her soil; every manufac- 
tured article she wants must be bought in England. 
The money paid for the products of the soil belongs 
to landlords, many of whom reside abroad, all of 
whom spend or invest it abroad. Therefore there is 
no capital in Ireland for manufactures. Until the 
people who till the soil own it the money paid for 
its products will not go back to Ireland; until it 
goes back there will be no capital to invest in man- 
ufactures ; until manufactures exist the country must 
remain poor, since an entire people cannot profitably 
live on a single occupation. 

The remedy, therefore, for Irish emigration, Irish 
famine and Irish poverty is Peasant Proprietary — 
the ultimate object of the Land-League agitation. 

The absurdity of saying that the rich soil of 
Ireland is not capable of supporting her people is 
completely exposed in another way. In Belgium, 
whose inhabitants number 5,336,185, the population 
to the square mile is 469 ; in Bavaria, with a popula- 
tion of 5,022,390, it is, 170; in Saxony, with a pop- 
ulation of 2,760,586, it is 407; in Switzerland, with a 
population of 2,669,147, it is 179; in the Netherlands, 



DRIVEN FROM HOME. 4OI 

with a population of 3,579,529, it is 185. These are 
all small countries, peaceful, thrifty, contented and 
prosperous. In Ireland, also a small country, the 
population to the square mile is only 169, yet she is 
neither peaceful, contented, thrifty nor prosperous. 

The population of Belgium has constantly increas- 
ed. Emigration has never been suggested to her peo- 
ple as a remedy for poverty : they are not poor. The 
population of Ireland has steadily declined, yet em- 
igration has been repeatedly suggested as a remedy 
for her poverty. Belgium, like Ireland, is an export- 
ing country. She never has famine ; she is able to 
export both food and manufactures. What is the 
secret of her prosperity? The people who till the 
land own it. There are in Belgium nearly a million 
and a half peasant proprietors. From 1846 to 1876 
the number of these increased twenty-four per cent. 
The money obtained for the fruits of the soil goes 
back to the country, and is utilized there ; one-fourth 
of the people are engaged in manufacturing. Al- 
though the population to the square mile is nearly 
three times that of Ireland, immigration there has 
actually exceeded emigration ! 

In Saxony, where the population to the square 
mile is 407, against 169 in Ireland, the number of 
inhabitants has increased ; the country is contented, 
thrifty and prosperous ; she knows nothing of fam- 
ine. The people who till the land own it. She feeds 
them all, and is able to export food. 

In the Netherlands, where the population to the 



402 DRIVEN FROM HOME. 

square mile is 185, famine is unknown; the people 
who till the soil own it. It feeds them all, and the 
chief exports are butter, sheep, corn, cheese and silk. 

In Bavaria, where the population to the square 
mile is 179, against 169 in Ireland, peace, prosperity 
and contentment prevail. The population has in- 
creased ; famine is unknown. The people who till 
the soil own it. It feeds them bountifully, and there 
is left food to export. 

In Switzerland, where the population to the square 
mile is 175, to 169 in Ireland; the population has in- 
creased. Out of a total of more than two millions 
and a half, there are only half a million who do not 
own land. The people are among the most contented 
in Europe, and the thriftiest. Over a million of the 
citizens are supported by agriculture; the rest are 
engaged in textile and mechanical industries. 

These are all small countries like Ireland, but the 
soil of none of them is equal in fertility to that of Ire- 
land. Their population to the square mile is greater 
than that in Ireland, yet we are told that Ireland can- 
not feed her people, and that emigration is the proper 
remedy. 

Ireland does not feed her people, because her soil 
is owned by foreigners, and its products are exported 
and sold for their benefit. 

Each of the continental countries compared with 
her has two institutions which insure their peace, 
prosperity and contentment — home rule and peasant 
proprietary. 



CHAPTER XIV. 
LIBERTY AND CRIME IN IRELAND. 

PROBABLY the average American believes that 
Ireland is a thoroughly criminal country. The 
cable is frequently charged with reports of alleged 
outrages. 

The average Englishman believes that the only 
way to protect life and property in Ireland is to sus- 
pend the British constitution in that country, give 
one Englishman — called a chief secretary — power to 
suspect any number of persons of a secret intention to 
break the law, on that suspicion hurry them into pris- 
on, and keep them there as long as he pleases. In that 
benign way the blessings of the British constitution 
have been bestowed on Ireland. 

To-day there are hundreds of persons in prison in 
Ireland, unaccused, untried, to be kept there, in all 
the horrors and sufferings of prison-life, as long as 
one Englishman in Ireland — a Mr. Forster — pleases. 
These persons are not accused of having committed 
any crime. A Mr. Forster, an Englishman in Ire- 
land, having no interest in the country — a " carpet- 
bagger " of the most detestable pattern— is pleased 

403 



404 LIBERTY AND CRIME IN IRELAND. 

to suspect that perhaps some of them might, under 
provocation, possibly break a window or throw a 
stone at a policeman. 

Yet Ireland is not in Russia. 

Yet Ireland is not at war with any enemy, domes- 
tic or foreign. 

Can Americans conceive any state of affairs in 
which, under their Constitution, they would tolerate, 
in time of profound peace, the arrest of their fellow- 
citizens, on suspicion, by a foreigner ? Is liberty no 
dearer to the people of Ireland than it is to the peo- 
ple of the United States ? 

By the act of legislative union, passed in 1800, 
England was solemnly pledged to give Ireland the 
benefits of the British constitution on precisely the 
same terms as to England and Scotland. Yet no 
less than fifty-nine times in the intervening period of 
eighty years has the constitution been withdrawn 
from Ireland and every vestige of personal liberty 
there destroyed. 

Was it because Ireland exceeds in criminality 
England and Scotland? Here are the official re- 
turns for twenty years. Let the reader observe, 
first, the population of the several countries, then 
the number of convictions for criminal offences, not 
forgetting that as "justice" has been administered in 
Ireland judges are dependents on the Crown and 
juries must take their verdicts from the judges' 
lips : 



LIBERTY AND CRIME IN IRELAND. 



405 



Number of Convictions for Criminal Offences in Eng- 
land and Wales, Scotland and Ireland from 1860 
to 1879 inclusive. 





England and Wales. 


Scotland. 


Ireland. 


Year. 
















Convicts. 


Population. 


Convicts. 


Population. 


Convicts. 


Population. 


i860. . 


12,068 


19,902,713 


2,414 


3,054,738 


2,979 


5,820,960 


1861 




18,326 


20,119,314 


2,418 


3,066,633 


3,27! 


5,788,415 


1862 




20,001 


20,352,14° 


2,697 


3,097,867 


3,796 


5,775,028 


1863 




20,818 


a o,590,356 


2,438 


3,126,587 


3,285 


5,716,975 


1864 




15,506 


20,834,496 


2,359 


s.jss.sgs 


3,000 


5,638,487 


1865 




19,614 


21,085,139 


2,355 


3,184,873 


2,661 


5,591,896 


1866 




18,849 


21,342,864 


2,292 


3,214,426 


2,418 


5,519,522 


1867 




18,971 


21,608,286 


2,510 


3,244,254 


2,733 


5,482,459 


1868 




20,091 


21,882,059 


2,490 


3,274,360 


2,394 


5,461,299 


1869 




I9,3i8 


22,164,847 


2,592 


3,304,747 


2,452 


5,443,9 r 9 


1870 




17,578 


22,457,366 


2,400 


3,335,418 


3,048 


5,412,660 


1871 




16,269 


22,760,359 


2,184 


3,366,375 


2,257 


5,386,708 


1872 




14,801 


23,067,535 


2,259 


3,399,226 


2,565 


5,368,696 


1873 




14,893 


23,356,414 


2,110 


3,430,923 


2,542 


5,337,26i 


1874 




15,195 


23,648,609 


2,231 


3,462,916 


2,367 


5,3m, 844 


1875 




*4,7 X 4 


23,944,459 


2,205 


3,495,214 


2,484 


5,3°9,494 


1876 




16,078 


24,744,010 


2,051 


3,527,811 


2,343 


5,321,618 


1877 




15,890 


24,547,309 


2,009 


3,560,715 


2,300 


5,338,906 


1878 




16,372 


24,854,397 


2,273 


3,593.929 


2,292 


5,351,060 


1879. • 


16,388 


25,165,336 


2,090 


3,627,453 


2,207 


5,362,337 



Taking round numbers, when, in i860, the pop- 
ulation of England and Wales was four times that 
of Ireland, the number of convictions for crime was 
five times that of Ireland. In that year the pop- 
ulation of Scotland was more than two millions less 
than the population of Ireland, and the criminal con- 
victions lacked only a few hundreds of those of Ire- 
land. Five years later, when the population of Eng- 
land and Wales was four times that of Ireland, crime 
was six times greater; while, in Scotland, whose 
population was only three-fifths that of Ireland, the 
number of criminal convictions showed but slight 
difference. In 1870 the ratio is more even in pro- 
portion to population. 



4C6 LIBERTY AND CRIME IN IRELAND. 

Let us compare Irish and Scotch crime from 1875 
for five years, keeping in mind that, in round num- 
bers, the population of Scotland is three-fifths that 
of Ireland. It will be observed that, proportionate- 
ly, Scotch crime exceeds Irish crime : 

Year. Scotland. Ireland. 

1875 2,205 2,484 

1876 2,051 2,343 

1877 2,009 2,300 

1878 2,273 

1879 2,090 2,207 

That arrests are made much more recklessly and 
unjustifiably in Ireland than in England, Wales or 
Scotland is shown by the proportion of convictions 
to committals. In England and Wales, for 1840 
and 1879, it was, respectively, seventy-three and 
seventy-six per cent. ; in Scotland, seventy-five and 
seventy-seven per cent. ; in Ireland, forty-six and 
fifty per cent. It was not in Ireland that the habeas 
corpus should have been suspended, for, from 1840 
to 1879, crime in Ireland declined eighty -two per 
cent, while in England the diminution was only 
forty-nine per cent, and in Scotland only thirty-one 
per cent 

It may be urged that if habeas corpus had not 
been so often suspended in Ireland, crime would be 
greater. An examination of the figures from 1875 
to 1879 — during which period there was no inter- 
ference with personal liberty — is a more than suffi- 
cient answer. 



LIBERTY AND CRIME IN IRELAND. 409 

The character of the crime in the three countries 
should also be considered. If, in Ireland, a too 
vivacious man cracks a joke at a policeman, he is 
reasonably certain of arrest ; in England a citizen 
may do everything to a policeman, short of cracking 
his skull, before he is arrested. In Ireland the con- 
stabulary are armed with revolvers, rifles, swords, 
which they use mercilessly on the smallest pretence ; 
every American who has been in London knows that 
a policeman cannot employ even his club upon an 
offender except in absolute self-defence. In Ireland 
one of the " crimes " which swell the aggregate of 
arrests is called " intimidation." If A, who is 
" loyal," is accidentally or wilfully jostled by B, 
who is a Land- Leaguer, that is a case of " intim- 
idation ;" B goes to jail, and his crime is included 
in the total of that month's " outrages." A very 
large proportion of the so-called " criminal offences " 
of Ireland are of so trivial a character that in any 
other country in the world no official notice would 
be taken of them. 

Philadelphia is a well-behaved city : it is the " City 
of Brotherly Love." The tranquil inhabitant of its 
historic soil possibly suspects that life and property 
in Ireland are utterly unsafe. Yet in Philadelphia — 
a model city, the " City of Brotherly Love " — whose 
population is sixteen per cent, that of Ireland, crime 
of all kinds is very much greater. In Philadelphia, 
in 1 879, there were forty-nine homicides ; in Ireland 
there were four. 

23 



4io 



LIBERTY AND CRIME IN IRELAND. 



The following table 1 perfectly illustrates that, in 
proportion to population and to gravity of offence 
there is less crime in Ireland than in England and 
Scotland: 



Classes of more serious 
offences. 



Irish numbers less than 
English and Scotch 
total of more serious 
offences 

Offences against prop- 
erty without violence 

Offences against prop- 
erty, with violence . 

Suicide 

Attempts to commit su- 
icide 

Forgery, etc 

Offences against purity 

Perjury 



Offences ir 
1878. 



2886 



458 
93 



English. 



Proportionate 
numbers in 
1877 for same 
population. 



41 89 
1774 



1014 
291 



69 


195 


90 


157 


42 


200 


15 


33 



Proportionate 
numbers in 
1877 for same 
population. 



59 2 S 
1065 

3175 
163 

108 

162 

281 

27 



Difference between 
Irish and English 
figures. 



Irish, English, 
less. less. 



I3 3 
1074 

556 
234 

126 
67 
58 



Is there any justification for the arbitrary abolition 
of personal liberty in Ireland ? 

1 Prepared by Mr. Hemy Bellingham, M. P. 



CHAPTER XV. 
THE LAND LAWS. 

LET us consider candidly the measures which the 
English government has taken from time to 
time to remedy the misfortunes which English law 
in Ireland has visited upon the Irish tenant. 

When the Irish Parliament was abolished, in 1800, 
the promise was made among many that imperial 
legislation for Ireland should be just and liberal. 
How has the promise been kept? 

Said John Bright in 1866 on the floor of the House 
of Commons : " Sixty-five years ago this Parliament 
undertook to govern Ireland. I will say nothing of 
the manner in which that duty was brought upon 
us, except that it was by proceedings disgraceful and 
corrupt to the last degree. During these sixty-five 
years there are only three considerable measures 
which Parliament has passed in the interest of Ire- 
land. One of them was the measure of 1829 for the 
emancipation of the Catholics. . . . But that meas- 
ure, so just, so essential, and which, of course, is not 
ever to be recalled, was a measure which the chief 
minister of the day, a great soldier and a great judge 

411 



412 THE LAND LAWS. 

of military matters, admitted was passed under the 
menace of, and only because of the danger of, civil 
war. The other two measures to which I have re- 
ferred are that for the relief of the poor and that for 
the sale of the encumbered estates ; and those meas- 
ures were introduced to the House and passed 
through the House in the emergency of a famine 
more severe than any that has desolated any Chris- 
tian country of the world within the last four hun- 
dred years. Except on these two emergencies, I 
appeal to every Irish member, and to every English 
member who has paid any attention to the matter, 
whether the statement is not true that this Parlia- 
ment has done nothing for the people of Ireland." 
In 1866, on another occasion, John Bright said: 
" The great evil of Ireland is this, that the Irish peo- 
ple — the Irish nation — are dispossessed of the soil ; 
and what we ought to do is provide for and aid in 
their restoration to it by all measures of justice. 
Why should we tolerate in Ireland the law of prim- 
ogeniture ? Why should we tolerate the system of 
entails ? Why should the object of the law be to 
accumulate land in great masses in few hands, and to 
make it almost impossible for persons of small means 
and tenant-farmers to become possessors of land ? 
If you go to other countries — for example, to Nor- 
way, to Denmark, to Holland, to Belgium, to France, 
to Germany, to Italy or to the United States — you 
will find that in all these countries those laws of 
which I complain have been abolished, and the land 



THE LAND LAWS. 413 

is just as free to buy and sell and hold and cultivate 
as any other description of property in the kingdom. 
... If my advice were taken, we should have a par- 
liamentary commission empowered to buy up the 
large estates in Ireland belonging to the English 
nobility, for the purpose of selling them on easy 
terms to the occupiers of the farms and to the 
tenantry of Ireland. . . . What you want is to re- 
store to Ireland a middle-class proprietary of the 
soil ; and I venture to say that if these estates 
could be purchased and could be sold out, farm by 
farm, to the tenant-occupiers in Ireland, it would be 
infinitely better in a conservative sense than that they 
should belong to great proprietors living out of the 
country. ... I have often asked myself whether 
patriotism is dead in Ireland. Cannot all the peo- 
ple of Ireland see that the calamities of their country 
are the creatures of the law, and, if that be so, that 
just laws only can remove them?" 

Still later in the same year Mr. Bright defined in 
detail his plan for the purchase of a portion of the 
Irish land by the government and its sale to actual 
occupiers. 

In 1868, in the House of Commons, Mr. Bright 
again spoke on peasant proprietary in Ireland. He 
proposed that the state lend the money to the tenant 
to buy, securing itself and giving him thirty-one or 
thirty-five years to refund it. " I would negotiate 
with land-owners who were willing to sell the tenants 
who were willing to buy, and I would make the land 



414 THE LAND LAWS. 

the great savings-bank for the future tenantry of Ire- 
land." 

The still more recent speeches of Mr. Bright have 
been in the same vein. I have preferred to quote 
from those made in former years to show that the 
proposition to buy a portion of the land in Ireland is 
not a novel one, and that it was advocated by an 
eminent English economist before the Irish Land 
League came into existence. 

The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 removed 
all political disabilities (with some exceptions not 
worth noticing in this place) which had kept four- 
fifths of the people of Ireland from the civil rights 
enjoyed by the one-fifth. But it did not restore to 
the heirs of those whose civil rights had been taken 
away by the penal laws the land which had been 
confiscated by those laws. Had O'Connell been as 
wise as he was energetic, he would have made the 
restoration of the land a condition of the abolition 
of the statutes in accordance with which the land 
was confiscated. It may be objected that this would 
have been impracticable, on account of transfers and 
the difficulty of establishing heirship. The simplest 
way would have been perfectly satisfactory to a ma- 
jority of the people. The rights of the owners in 
possession could have Ibeen respected, as they were 
in Prussia in the beginning of the century, and in 
Russia in the latter half of it. The state, which 
took the land away from the people of Ireland with- 
out compensation, could have found a way to restore 



THE LAND LAWS. 415 

it to them by compensating those who had obtained 
possession of it. Peasant proprietors could have 
been easily created in Ireland fifty years ago. 

But the land was not restored. The heirs of the 
original owners had sunk into tenantry and poverty. 
The land remains in the possession of the heirs of 
those who obtained it first by confiscation. What 
has the British Parliament done to improve their 
condition ? 

Nearly half a century passed without the adoption 
of a single measure to that end ! Then what? 

Poor relief is the first lien on land in England. 
The like law providing for the relief of the poor of 
Ireland was not passed until 1846, and then only 
because the famine-shadow was already apparent. 
But the law does not operate to support the poor. 
If the people of Ireland had not been furnished with 
money to buy food from the landlords last winter, the 
mortality would have compared with that of 1847. 

The law is so constructed that the burden is a 
minimum on the landlord, and when famine comes 
the people must die if a foreign charity does not 
hasten to their succor. This was abundantly proven 
last winter and spring. 

The next legislation to modify the evils of the 
Irish land system was the Encumbered Estates 
Act. But that was an act for the relief of Irish 
landlords. 

Until its passage in 1848 the law of primogeniture 
and entail, still the law of England, was the law in 



41 6 THE LAND LAWS. 

Ireland. The Encumbered Estates Act set that law 
aside. It compelled the sale of estates encumbered 
to half their value. The sale was made on the peti- 
tion of the owner or of any of his creditors, and the 
proceeds were divided among the claimants. In 
1858 to that law was added the Landed Estates 
Act, by which the courts can deal with unencum- 
bered as well as with encumbered estates. Un- 
der the old law of primogeniture and entail many 
of the Irish landlords had hopelessly bankrupted 
themselves. "A mountain-load of mortgages or 
a network of settlements rendered them power- 
less." The law freeing them of their bonds put 
the land in the market and enabled them to get 
rid of their debts. But at the time the law was 
passed there was no market for land. The fam- 
ine had paralyzed the country. The immediate 
effect of the law, therefore, was to rob many cred- 
itors of their just dues. The law compelled cred- 
itors to submit to a sale, notwithstanding that they 
had an express contract that no one should ever 
disturb them in their claim on the land except by 
paying the claim in full. The new law coerced vi- 
olation of contract. Says Professor Cairnes : " It 
proceeded according to rules unknown to our sys- 
tem of jurisprudence ; it set aside solemn contracts; 
it disregarded the cherished traditions of real-prop- 
erty law." He admits that it would not be easy to 
disturb the statements of Isaac Butt that at a time 
of unprecedented depreciation of the value of land 



THE LAND LAWS. 419 

it compelled a general auction of Irish estates, and 
that no more violent interference with vested rights 
can be found in English history. But, notwithstand- 
ing the justness of this criticism, does any one con- 
demn the principle of the law ? Professor Cairnes 
admits that according to the received maxims of 
English jurisprudence it was a measure of confisca- 
tion ; " yet it is not less certain that of all measures 
passed in recent times it is that one of which the 
beneficial effects have been most widely and cordially 
recognized." If the English government for Ireland 
could pass, more than thirty years ago, a law for the 
benefit of Irish landlords, invading vested rights, 
need so much outcry be made about a proposition 
to pass a law for the benefit of Irish tenants which 
may apparently, but will not actually, assail vested 
rights ? 

We have seen two pieces of legislation which 
were intended to affect the Irish land tenure. The 
first was a law making the support of the poor a lien 
on the land; it is so constructed as to make Irish 
poverty a lien instead on the charity of the world. 

The second was the Encumbered Estates Act. 
But that was for the benefit of Irish landlords. 

The third was the Gladstone Land Law of 1870. 

Its aim was good. On its passage through Par- 
liament it encountered no less than three hundred 
amendments. When it emerged from the legislature 
and entered the presence of Her Majesty for signa- 
ture, it had not confiscated a single valuable right 



420 THE LAND LAWS. 

of the Irish landlord, says the approved biographer 
of its author. 

The avowed object of the Liberal minister was to 
make Ulster tenant-right law throughout Ireland. 
That was all. Ulster tenant-right is an institution 
which sadly recalls the pitiless efforts of former days 
to drive the Irish people off the land of their coun- 
try for the purpose of planting it with foreign col- 
onists. The tenant-farmers in Ulster were chiefly 
Protestants, Irish, Scotch and English, and to encour- 
age them it was agreed by common consent that they 
should have continuous occupancy of their farms at 
fair rent. In other words, they were given fixity of 
tenure. The abstract right became a substantial 
property. If the tenant chose to give up his farm, 
he had the right to sell his fixity of tenure as a kind 
of good-will to his successor. The substantial value 
of the tenant-right was based on the improvements 
effected by him on the land. These improvements 
did not become the property of the landlord ; they 
remained the property of the tenant, and gave him a 
sort of partnership in the land. This was tenant- 
right. The custom which fostered it never obtained 
in other parts of the kingdom, where the landlords 
were of one religion and the tenants of another. 
Tenant-right did not secure against eviction for non- 
payment of rent. But if the tenant were compelled 
to give up his holding because he could not meet 
his obligation to the landlord, he was not turned out 
penniless into the road. He could dispose of his 



THE LAND LAWS. 42 1 

tenant-right to whoever would pay him the highest 
price for it ; the debt to the landlord was the first to 
be settled out of the proceeds ; the balance was his 
own. It was, and is, in fact, compensation for im- 
provements paid on eviction, not by the landlord, but 
by the incoming tenant, who thus acquires a right of 
ownership in them and can in his turn dispose of 
them. The Gladstone act of 1 870 attempted to make 
this practice of a locality the law for the country. 

But it was only a fair-weather law. It should 
have been accompanied by a consort statute pro- 
viding for perennially good harvests. When the 
bad crops came there were wholesale evictions for 
non-payment of rent ; yet the failure of the tenants 
to meet their obligations was not their fault ; it was 
the " act of God." What good was Ulster tenant- 
right then? The tenants who had not crops enough 
to pay rent had no money to buy tenant-right from 
other tenants equally unfortunate. Besides, the value 
of the tenant-right was unstable, shifting, uncertain. 
In many cases it was simply intangible. The evict- 
ed tenant had to go out; if the condition of the 
market was such that there was no one to buy his 
tenant-right, what good did the act of 1870 do him ? 
The premier's biographer was remarkably correct 
when he said that the act did not take away a single 
valuable right of the Irish landlord. 

The act of 1870 was land reform on hypothesis. 
It did not touch the landlord ; it did not always 
touch the tenant. In a season of "high rents and 



422 THE LAND LAWS. 

fine crops it afforded the tenant such compensation 
for his improvements as he could induce some other 
tenant to pay him. If he could find no one to pay 
him anything, he must submit to his misfortune. 
He lost his farm, and all the labor and all the 
money he may have expended on it. 

There was a bill with a misleading title introduced 
into the last session. It was called " The Compen- 
sation for Disturbance Bill." It was an attempt to 
compel landlords to allow to tenants evicted for 
non-payment of rent compensation for improve- 
ments, provided it was legally proven that their 
failure to meet their obligation was due to famine. 
The bill passed the Commons, and was thrown out 
by the Lords. If anything were wanting to demon- 
strate that the Gladstone act was hypothetical and 
fair-weather law, the introduction of the last measure 
is sufficient. 

This completes the entire record which the Brit- 
ish Parliament has made for itself in reforming the 
Irish land laws to 1881. 

But was the English government equally neglect- 
ful of the Irish landlord ? Did it merely neglect the 
Irish tenant, forgetting his existence, or were oppor- 
tunities for helping him thrust on it and declined ? 

It is an error to suppose that this question of the 
relation of tenant and landlord in Ireland is a new 
one : it has been discussed throughout the entire pe- 
riod in which that relation has endured. There is an 
immense literature upon it, and there is nothing to be 



THE LAND LAWS. 423 

said of it to-day which has not been said frequently 
for a hundred years. This literature is not familiar in 
the United States, for two reasons : we have never 
had a land question, and we get our literature mainly 
from England. In the English literary market books 
and pamphlets on the Irish land question have not 
been in favor ; no English publisher had any interest 
in circulating information which would tend to restore 
the publishing trade that Dublin had before the act of 
legislative union, abolishing the Irish Parliament and 
compelling Ireland to send .over to London not only 
for all the manufactured articles she wanted, but for 
her laws. 

The literature which is extant in Ireland, and now 
more abundantly than ever before in this country, is 
full of testimony to these facts : That the English 
Parliament knew very well the existence and the 
grievances of the Irish tenant, the existence and the 
oppressiveness of the Irish landlords, and that al- 
though no law was passed until '46 for the benefit 
of the tenant, and no land law which pretended to 
confer any substantial benefit upon him until 1870, 
laws were frequently passed for the benefit of the 
Irish landlord, and bills introduced for the benefit of 
the tenant were utterly ignored or thrown out. 

The Irish landlord was given privileges and pow- 
ers which were denied the English landlord. The 
title of many English landlords to-day is no better 
than that of the Irish landlords ; they acquired, with- 
out paying for them, estates which the Crown confis- 



424 THE LAND LAWS. 

cated, sometimes from individual owners, sometimes 
from the general public. But when the distress of 
the landless English people became so great that 
they were in danger of extreme suffering, the " Poor 
Law " was passed, making the tax for the support of 
the poor the first lien on the land, the first tax to be 
collected. No such law was passed for Ireland until 
the awful famine-time of '46 ; and, as its enforcement 
was in the landlords' hands, they were careful of their 
own interests in applying its provisions. 

Soon after the act of union the English began leg- 
islating in favor of the Irish landlords. They already 
possessed enormous powers over the tenants ; in the 
reign of George III. they were authorized to seize 
the growing crops of the tenant for rent, hold them 
until ripe, compel the tenant to care for and protect 
them, pay all expenses incurred while doing so ; and 
then they sold the crops. As if that was not enough 
to drive the ruined tenant into the mad-house or the 
jail, they were subsequently in the same reign given 
new powers to evict him. Under the reign of George 
IV. these prerogatives were still further enlarged, even 
to compelling the tenant to furnish security to the land- 
lords in ejectment suits. In the same reign the Irish 
landlord was given the privilege of immediate execu- 
tion of judgment against a tenant. He could make 
up his mind at seven in the morning to drive a hun- 
dred families off his estate ; he had only to apply to 
the nearest qualified representative of the English 
government, get his order, send his crowbars and 



THE LAND LAWS. 425 

muskets down among the tenantry, and in a few 
minutes the hundred families would be on the road- 
side or in the ditches, with no prospect ahead but 
death or imprisonment. Can any American wonder 
that there is crime in Ireland ? But we shall see later 
the nature and the enormity of the crime. During the 
reign of William IV. the Irish landlord was accorded 
still larger powers, and from the passage of the first 
of these landlord laws until 1846 thirty-two bills were 
passed by the English Parliament for the benefit of 
the Irish landlord, and not one for the relief of his 
wretched victim, the Irish tenant. 

The great famine of '46 and the subsequent years 
resulted in an effort to get the English Parliament to 
consider the condition of the Irish tenants, a million of 
whom had died. In 1 85 2 a bill was introduced ; it pro- 
posed again merely the proposition of the Gladstone 
bill of ten years ago — the extension of Ulster tenant- 
right ; it was rejected. Later in the same session an- 
other bill was introduced by the government; it passed 
the Commons, but was rejected by the Lords. In 1 85 5 
another bill of the same tenor was introduced ; nothing 
came of it. In 1857 another bill was introduced; it 
did not get even a hearing. In 1858 another bill was 
introduced, asking only that the tenant should be al- 
lowed compensation for the permanent improvements 
effected by him on the land ; it was thrown out on 
second reading. A bill was passed in i860 which did 
not alter the status of either landlord or tenant. 

The inadequacy of the Gladstone law of 1 870 was 



426 THE LAND LAWS. 

so apparent from the beginning that frequent attempts 
were made to induce the English Parliament to ex- 
amine into the atrocious wrongs still inflicted on the 
Irish tenant, and in nine years no less than eighteen 
land bills were introduced, no one of which asked 
aught for the tenant but the recognition of his equity 
in the permanent improvement of the farm by his 
labor. Not one of them was treated with civility. 

We reach now the Land Act of 1881, of which so 
much has been said. In its original draft it was a 
wholesome measure. It reaffirmed the principles of 
the law of 1880, which Mr. Gladstone had fondly be- 
lieved would not only transform the Irish tenant into 
a peaceable, loyal and successful tenant-farmer, but 
would enable him in time to become a peasant pro- 
prietor ; for even Mr. Gladstone favored peasant pro- 
prietary in Ireland long before the organization of 
the Land League, and in the bill of 1880 there are 
what are known as the " Bright clauses," which pro- 
vide for governmental purchase of the land and its sale 
to the tenants in the manner described by Mr. Bright. 

But to make land laws in the English Parliament 
for the Irish landlords is one thing, and to compel the 
Irish landlords to comply with those laws is quite 
another. Instead of doing anything in harmony with 
the Land Act of 1870, the majority of the Irish land- 
lords, taking advantage of its loose construction, lit- 
erally cheated the tenants out of its possible benefits. 
They compelled the tenants to make leases by which 
they contracted themselves out of the scope of the 




SEARCHING FOR ARMS. 



THE LAND LAWS. 429 

law altogether. The result was soon apparent : the 
landlords had rendered the law inoperative. This 
was strikingly illustrated in the necessity which Mr. 
Gladstone felt in accepting from Mr. Parnell and his 
supporters the terms of the " Compensation for Dis- 
turbance " Bill. There was nothing in that bill which 
is not to be found in the Land Act of 1870 ; yet the 
House of Lords rejected it, and the minister who 
had carried through the same provision ten years 
previously submitted to the affront put upon him by 
the hereditary legislators, and abandoned to their 
fate thousands of the Irish tenantry for whom evic- 
tion was, almost in his own words, a sentence of 
death. He told Parliament that if the Compensation 
for Disturbance Bill did not pass, fifteen thousand 
Irish tenants would probably be turned out ; and, he 
added, " a sentence of eviction is almost equivalent 
to a sentence of starvation." 

The English House of Lords was sublimely in- 
different to the starvation of any number of thousands 
of Irish tenants. That was an old story for its noble 
members : it did not touch their sensibilities in the 
least. The peers rejected the bill, although it was 
widely believed that if they did Mr. Gladstone would 
appeal to the country. They rejected the bill ; but 
Mr. Gladstone, for reasons known to himself, accept- 
ed the affront, and was meek under it. 

When the Land Act which is now the law was 
introduced it was affirmed, with apparently sound 
reason, that the House of Lords would throw out 

24 



430 THE LAND LAWS. 

that also. It could not be expected that, having 
violently strained at the gnat, it would amiably swal- 
low the camel. Perhaps we shall discover that it 
was not a camel it finally swallowed. It could not 
have been passed had not influential landlords impor- 
tuned the Conservative peers to vote for it. 

There has been a great deal of honest condemna- 
tion poured out in this country upon the refusal of 
the Land-League leaders to accept the Land Law of 
1 88 1, and upon their advice to the Irish tenants to 
test it before accepting it. If a State legislature in 
the United States should pass a real-estate law which 
was declared by its authors to be a practical revolu- 
tion of tenure, it is probable that owners of land and 
tenants would alike be careful to read the new law 
before rushing into court to become bound by it. Now, 
it is equally reasonable to believe that the Irish land- 
lords and tenants have been reading the new Land 
Law before rushing into court to place themselves 
under its terms. The expression of opinion in the 
United States concerning the law is based, it may 
be apprehended, on a considerable want of accurate 
knowledge concerning the contents of the law; it is 
within bounds to say that not one man in each hun- 
dred thousand in the United States has read the text 
of the law or can give an intelligent and comprehen- 
sive statement of its provisions. The impression 
which exists in this country concerning it has been 
created entirely by those agencies whose highest in- 
terest is to exaggerate the benefits of the bill. 



THE LAND LAWS. 43 1 

Americans are not disposed to forget how per- 
sistently the state of affairs in this country was mis- 
represented abroad by English news-agents during 
the civil war. They do not forget, for they never 
can, that — so astoundingly false had been the con- 
tinuous narrative sent over to London of the prog- 
ress of the war — when the intelligence of the sur- 
render of Richmond reached the clubs the loungers 
treated it as a good joke ; that very day's papers 
contained the usual assertions that the Union forces 
were being everywhere mercilessly whipped, and that 
the dissolution of the Union, the destruction of our 
republic, was already an all but accomplished fact. 
They do not forget, nor shall they ever, . that, so 
profound was the conviction in England that our 
free institutions were in dissolution, the eminent 
English historian Freeman, who wrote on the in- 
formation furnished by the English news-agents on 
this side, actually published a volume now curiously 
rare in American book-stores. It was entitled A 
History of Federal Government from the Foundation 
of the Achcean League to the Disruption of the United 
States. They do not forget, nor can they ever, that 
even the present first minister of England, Mr. Glad- 
stone, publicly declared that the Union was fighting 
for mere power, but the South for liberty. They do 
not forget, nor can they ever, that the great mass of 
the English politicians sincerely desired the success 
of the rebellion — not because they loved our South- 
ern people, whom their manufacturers robbed, taking 



432 THE LAND LAWS. 

advantage of their dire necessities, but because they 
gloried in the prospect that democratic institutions 
were about to be extinguished in the world. They 
do not forget that, while professing neutrality, rebel 
privateers were built, manned, equipped and com- 
missioned in English harbors, and that each soldier 
of the South who died at Antietam carried the trade- 
mark of a Manchester manufactory on every button 
of his uniform. It is not gracious to recall these 
things now ; the motive is its own excuse. England 
hated the Southern people for being members of a 
free confederation democratic in essence ; in their 
rebellion she saw a hope of the extinction of democ- 
racy ; in their extreme poverty she saw a chance to 
sell at swindling prices everything they needed to 
prolong the war ; and when they failed she brazenly 
turned around and exulted with the victors, avowing 
that she had always been in favor of the Union ! 
Her perfidy is more detested to-day in the Southern 
States than even in the Northern, and with a good 
reason. She held out to them promises that were 
never kept; she traded in their misfortunes and 
abandoned them in their final extremity. Then she 
taunted them with their failure. 

The American people, South and North, do not 
forget, nor can they ever, that in 1881, when the 
assassin struck down the chief executive of the 
American republic, the English court ostentatiously 
went into a week's mourning and in other theatrical 
ways sought to make us believe how deeply their 



THE LAND LAWS. 433 

queen and government shared our sorrow. But in 
1 88 1 there was no danger of the disruption of the 
American republic ; our friendship, in the zenith 
of our power, is more necessary to the government 
of Great Britain than was its neutrality to us twenty 
years ago. But neither can the American people for- 
get that when, in the gloomy days of the civil war, 
a blow struck at the head of the republic was a blow 
that touched its heart and sent a dreadful thrill 
through its vitality, — when Abraham Lincoln was 
assassinated the English court did not go into 
mourning. There were no theatrical displays of 
sorrow and sympathy then ; the foul deed was sup- 
posed to presage our utter prostration and extinc- 
tion ; English statesmen believed that the rebellion 
would assume new life, and would march on to tri- 
umph ; that the Union would be dissolved, democ- 
racy would shortly be extinct. So the court did 
not go into mourning ! 

Recalling these significant reminders of English 
misrepresentation of American history, is it not fair 
for Americans to apprehend that we get as much 
truth from Ireland through these same wilful agen- 
cies as Europe received from them concerning us 
twenty years ago ? We know almost nothing about 
the Land Act of this year except what English com- 
mentators have told us. We know almost nothing 
about crime in Ireland except what the English 
news-agents tell us. They have so grossly misrep- 
resented its quality and frequency that until the cold 



434 THE LAND LAWS. 

facts are spread out we are likely to consider all Ire- 
land a pandemonium. The population of Philadel- 
phia being less than a fifth that of Ireland, one would 
say that if five times the number of homicides that 
occurred last year in Philadelphia should have oc- 
curred in Ireland it would indicate that Ireland is a 
rather peaceful country — one, at least, in which there 
would not be the slightest justification for suspend- 
ing habeas corpus or interfering with the freedom of 
the mass of the people. The number of homicides 
in Philadelphia last year was thirty-four; we may 
expect at least a hundred and seventy in Ireland. 
How many were there ? Not a hundred, not fifty, 
not twenty-five, not ten; just five! 

If English newspapers thus grossly mislead con- 
cerning crime in Ireland, are they more truthful 
about law there? 

What, in brief, are the main features of the Land 
Act of 1 88 1, and why should the Irish people not 
accept it and become quiet and contented, pay their 
rents, attend to their own business, cease agitating ? 

First, because the law itself excludes a large pro- 
portion of them from its benefits. Those to whom 
the law denies its provisions cannot submit to them. 
It excludes — 

1. All the agricultural laborers. They number 
four hundred thousand. 

2. All the tenants who hold under leases. Their 
number is not anywhere stated, but it must be very 
great, for this reason : To evade the Land Law of 



THE LAND LAWS. 435 

1870 many landlords compelled their tenants to take 
leases contracting themselves out of that law, and 
during the years 1878, 1879, 1880, when eviction 
stared so many thousands in the face, the landlords, 
fearing that the distress would result in the passage 
of some relief measure, as the famine of '47 resulted 
in the enactment of the Poor Law, seized the oppor- 
tunity to compel their tenants to take leases which 
would exclude them from the provisions of any law 
which might be passed to the hurt of the landlord. 
The new law provides that the terms of the leases 
shall not be violated. The rent under these leases 
may be a rack-rent of the most approved fashion, 
but the tenant can get no relief from the new law. 
3. It practically excludes all tenants who are in 
arrears of rent. This is the worst of the bad fea- 
tures of the law. The poor harvests of three years 
preceding the passage of the bill rendered the pay- 
ment of the rents simply impossible. The chief 
argument in favor of the bill was that it would save 
these unhappy victims of the " act of God " from 
eviction, from death. But the House of Lords 
struck out the clause making the law retroactive. 
Mr. Parnell and his followers made a noble struggle 
to rescue the clause, but Mr. Gladstone accepted the 
Lords' amendment. There is a tortuous and cum- 
bersome way by which, with the assistance of the 
landlord, one class of tenants in arrears may get 
some help ; but as it imposes on the tenant an obli- 
gation which he cannot generally discharge — the 



43 6 THE LAND LAWS. 

paying up of one year's arrears out of his own re- 
sources — the provision will doubtless be inoperative, 
like the Bright clauses in the law of 1870 for creat- 
ing peasant proprietary. 

It will be seen, therefore, that there are perhaps 
six or seven hundred thousand agricultural people 
of Ireland excluded from the law, outside its pale. 
It is waste of time to ask them to submit to it. 
They want a land law which will include them. 

It has never been denied by any reflecting English 
economist that peasant proprietary is the only per- 
manent solution of the land question in Ireland, as 
it proved the only permanent solution of the land 
question in every other country in which it has 
arisen. This law was enthusiastically lauded as a 
step toward peasant proprietary. But, in fact, it is 
the very reverse. It is a law for the diminution of 
small holdings ; it is a law for the preservation of 
landlordism ; it is a law for the extension of monop- 
oly in land. 

The only explicit provision for the purchase of the 
land from the landlord and its resale to the tenant 
with the aid of the government is this : If a landlord 
wants to sell, and three-fourths of the tenants are 
able and willing to buy, the government may ad- 
vance a portion of the purchase-money. But on 
how many estates are such conditions likely to 
arise? The provision for extending monopoly in 
land is vastly simpler. It is this : If a tenancy is 
being sold, and nobody offers for it a sum exceed- 



THE LAND LAWS. 437 

ing the arrears of the rent, it falls to the landlord as 
the purchaser. Many instances of this kind will 
occur, and have already occurred. In such cases 
the tenant of course receives nothing for the im- 
provements effected by his own labor and money. 

But if a large number of the Irish farmers and all 
the farm-laborers are excluded from the benefits of 
the law, it contains substantial advantages for those 
who are entitled to them. It secures the tenant 
from capricious eviction for fifteen years, provided, 
of course, he pays his rent. Should another series 
of bad seasons come like those recently passed, 
there is nothing in the new law to save the tenant 
from eviction, as formerly. All the advantages he 
acquires under the bill are contingent on good 
harvests. In several of the continental countries the 
landlord shares with the tenant the profit or the loss 
of the harvests. Had this principle been incorpo- 
rated in the new law for Ireland, the mass of the 
people would have been satisfied. They would then 
know that if, through no fault of their own, the crops 
were lost and the toil of the year thrown away, they 
were at least certain of having a roof under which 
to shelter themselves and their little ones. The new 
Land Law contains no such assurance. It is not, 
therefore, a permanent settlement of the land ques- 
tion in Ireland ; and that question will never be 
settled until the man who owns the soil tills it and 
lives by it. 

The administration of the law, with the restrictions 



438 THE LAND LAWS. 

described, is entrusted to a commission of three, 
with power to appoint deputies. This commission, 
although at this writing in session less than a month, 
has completely vindicated the assertion of the Land 
League that the Irish landlords created famine by 
extorting rack-rents. More than forty thousand 
applications by tenants — whose aggregate is six 
hundred thousand — have been filed with the com- 
missioners under the section providing that when 
a landlord and tenant cannot agree on the sum to be 
paid as rent, either may apply to the commission to 
have the rent fixed ; and there is no appeal from the 
decision of the commission. The rent fixed cannot 
be changed for fifteen years, nor can the landlord 
during that period evict the tenant if the latter pays 
the rent. If, on the other hand, the tenant chooses 
to sell his holding, he has the right to do so, but the 
landlord may object to the incoming tenant; then 
appeal lies to the land court If the tenant should 
sell while owing rent, the claims of the landlord 
must first be paid out of the proceeds of the sale. 
It was rational on the part of the Irish landlords to 
urge the enactment of such a law. 

The action of the commission up to this time has 
been almost uniformly in favor of the tenant. Rents 
have been reduced materially In many cases the 
reduction has been twenty-five per cent. ; in some, 
fifty ; in the largest proportion, about fifteen per cent. 
This is the complete vindication of the Land League. 
The new rents are not arbitrarily fixed. The deputy 



THE LAND LAWS. 439 

commissioners visit the farm, and reach a conclusion 
concerning the rent according to these instructions : 

" 1. Ascertain name and address of landlord and 
tenant. 

" 2. The number of acres tenant pays rent for, 
and the rent per acre ; when and how often in- 
creased. 

" 3. Find the Poor-Law valuation on each hold- 
ing. 

"4. The extent of tenant's improvement, and 
whether or not the landlord contributed in any way 
toward such improvement by way of building houses, 
offices, fences, drainage, walls, manures, supplying 
timber, slates for roofing; and if so, ascertain what 
amount so advanced by landlord, and when. 

" 5. Deduct all improvements made by the tenant, 
and consider what would be the value of the land 
before these improvements were made. Then fix a 
fair rent as between landlord and tenant, putting all 
improvements out of the reckoning. 

" 6. In settling a fair rent consider the situation 
and conveniences attaching to the farm, whether the 
farm has water on it ; has it bog and meadow on it ? 
If not, what does it cost the tenant to buy turf, hay 
and manure yearly for use of his farm? What is the 
distance from market where farmer sells the produce 
of his farm ? All these items to be considered in 
fixing a fair rent. The valuators to be as consci- 
entious as possible, without affection or favor, as it 
may occur that they should go before the land 



440 THE LAND LAWS. 

commission court at a future day to substantiate 
their award. 

" 7. The act of Parliament for your guidance runs 
as follows (section 8, sub-section 9) : ' No rent shall 
be allowable or made payable in any proceedings 
under this act in respect of improvements made 
by the tenant or his predecessor in title, and for 
which, in the opinion of the court, the tenant or 
his predecessor in title shall not have been paid or 
otherwise compensated by the landlord or his pred- 
ecessor in title.' 

" 8. Therefore it is for you, as impartial valuators, 
to value the land, and the land only, apart from all 
improvements. Keep out of your valuation the 
value of the houses, offices, and all other improve- 
ments made by the tenants at their own expenses, 
as the landlord has no claim on these improve- 
ments for rent, not having given one penny toward 
them." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

WHAT IS THE END TO BE? 

THE Land League succeeded in averting famine; 
it succeeded in keeping down evictions. The 
increase of the armed constabulary and the constant 
pouring in of troops to aid the landlords increased 
the number of evictions in 1880 to ten thousand four 
hundred and fifty-seven persons, composing two thou- 
sand one hundred and ten families — a dreadful total, 
but insignificant compared with ninety thousand four 
hundred and forty persons in the corresponding year 
of the last famine. It succeeded in keeping Ireland 
quiet, patient and orderly in spite of starvation to in- 
cite them to commit crime against property and sol- 
diery to exasperate them to deeds of reckless violence. 
The command of the League was, " Break no law ;" 
and it was obeyed with marvellous unanimity. Nu- 
merous outrages were reported, but investigation 
generally revealed that they were the inventions of 
enterprising news-purveyors or the malicious fabri- 
cations of base persons who had a purpose to serve. 
The landlords, who were driven to rage by the with- 
holding of rents and by the peaceful agitation carried 
on by the Land League for the establishment of peas- 

441 



44 2 WHAT IS THE END TO BE? 

ant proprietary, implored the government to declare 
the League illegal and suppress it. This could not 
easily be done. All its operations were strictly con- 
stitutional. There was but one way to suppress it — 
suspend the constitution in Ireland. Abolish per- 
sonal liberty. Prohibit free speech. Disperse pub- 
lic assemblies of the people gathered to petition for 
a redress of grievances. Imprison the leaders. Then 
the army and the constabulary could be loosed to 
drag the last penny from the tenantry and at the 
point of the bayonet turn into the highways those 
unable to pay. 

As a prelude to this policy, which Mr. Forster 
proceeded to carry out, with the assistance of the 
greatest Liberal minister England has ever had, 
Mr. Gladstone, " outrage-factories " were established. 
One day a dreadful story of injury to cattle was re- 
ported ; investigation showed that it was pure fabri- 
cation. The next a bailiff was fired at; he had hired 
somebody to do it. A boy's suicide in the woods 
was reported an agrarian crime. Informers and spies 
committed depredations and charged them upon the 
Land League. 

The command of the League was, " Break no law." 
How faithfully that command was obeyed is demon- 
strated by a comparison of the crimes committed 
during the previous famine-period with those com- 
mitted while the League controlled the people. 
Crime in Ireland has heretofore been largely reg- 
ulated by the conduct of the landlords and the con- 



WHAT IS THE END TO BE? 443 

dition of the people during partial or general famine. 
A hungry man will strike a blow or steal a loaf. A 
man who sees his family dying of hunger and want 
and beholds the author of their misery rolling by in 
a splendid equipage is likely — for human nature is 
the same everywhere — to feel hatred and to wish for 
revenge. In 1847 tne total number of criminal con- 
victions in Ireland was fifteen thousand two hundred 
and thirty -three ; in 1879, while the Land League 
governed Ireland, the total number of crimes report- 
ed by the police was nine hundred and seventy-seven. 
In 1847 the total was eighteen thousand two hundred 
and six; in 1880, while the Land League governed 
Ireland, the total was only slightly in excess of that 
of the preceding year. In 1848 the homicides were 
one hundred and seventy-one, and in the following 
year two hundred and three; in the corresponding 
years of the recent famine they were respectively five 
and four. It was thus that the Land League gov- 
erned Ireland. Davitt had repeated the words of 
O'Connell : " Whoever commits a crime is the enemy 
of his country." 

Reasonable men would assume that such an or- 
ganization would have received the thanks of the 
government whose work it had done so much better 
than the same work could have been done by the 
government, even if it had tried in good faith to do 
it. But the annihilation of the League was essential 
to the perpetuation of the system of landlordism 
which still prevails in Ireland, and the government 



444 WHAT IS THE END TO BE? 

was on the landlord side. After English opinion had 
been sufficiently drugged, Ireland was declared to be 
on the verge of anarchy, and the Coercion Bill was 
passed early in 1881. It empowered, nominally the 
lord-lieutenant, really the secretary, a Mr. Forster, 
an irresponsible foreigner in Ireland, to arrest and de- 
tain, at least until the last day of September, 1882, 
any number of persons whom he might be pleased 
to suspect of having entertained any criminal inten- 
tions before the passage of the law or after it. This 
accomplished the complete destruction of liberty in 
Ireland. To-day the Irish jails are full of the best 
and purest of her people. Mr. Davitt was taken to 
Millbank prison. Among those now incarcerated 
are Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, Mr. Brennan, and all the 
officers and efficient supporters of the Land League 
who remained in Ireland. The treasurer, Mr. Egan, 
reached Paris; Rev. Father Sheehy, Mr. Healy and 
Mr. T. P. O'Connor came to America. 

Mr. Parnell was denied the privilege allowed the 
most infamous felons — that of having a private in- 
terview with a lawyer for the purpose of testing the 
legality of his arrest. When Robert Emmet was 
about to be tried for his life, the English government 
assigned him as counsel a spy in the employment of 
its secret-service bureau ; and every fact, every paper, 
which he entrusted to this wretch was instantly con- 
veyed to the attorney-general. Emmet went to the 
scaffold. The physician who attended the prisoners, 
Dr. Kenny, who had voluntarily risked his life a 



WHAT IS THE END TO BE? 445 

hundred times among the poor of Dublin during an 
epidemic, was not only discharged from his official 
position as surgeon to one of the public institutions, 
but was arrested, and is also in prison, his crime be- 
ing that he carried a letter out of the jail. Miss 
Anna Parnell, who had organized the Ladies' Land 
Leagues in Ireland for the purpose of providing for 
the families of those members of the League who 
were imprisoned, was refused admission to her 
brother, although it had been publicly stated that 
he was ill. All the members of the League were 
subjected to the most rigorous regulations, and were 
deprived of privileges commonly allowed the mean- 
est malefactors. Not one of them had violated any 
law of the country. The severity of their treatment 
appears to have been inspired by malice on the part 
of the English representatives of the foreign govern- 
ment on account of the issuance from Kilmainham 
jail of what, with their habitual and characteristic 
spirit of misrepresentation, the government press 
agents called a " no-rent manifesto." The trick of 
misnaming the document was so successful that some 
of the supporters of the League were deceived by 
it, and censured the prisoners on moral grounds. 
The " no-rent manifesto " was described as an order 
to the farmers who were members of the League to 
pay no rent at any time or under any circumstances ; 
it was denounced as communistic. However much 
men may differ as to the wisdom and policy of its 
issuance at this time (and the fact that grave doubts 
25 



446 WHAT IS THE END TO BE? 

on this point do honestly exist in the minds of some 
of the warmest friends and most active supporters of 
the League, both before and since, is not denied), it 
is simply a matter of fact — which any one who reads 
the text of the manifesto can ascertain for himself — 
that it was simply an appeal to the farmers to meet 
the tyranny of the government in the only way which 
would or could be successful — to withhold the rents 
due until the government restored the constitutional 
liberty of the country. It was not an order for the 
abolition of rent, it was precisely such a step as 
the American people took when they set up their 
order of " No representation, no taxation." The 
leaders of the League issued it only after the gov- 
ernment had declared the League itself illegal and 
forbade any meetings of its members in public or 
private. When it is remembered that the League 
had saved the lives of thousands during the famine ; 
had reduced the crime of the Country to a minimum ; 
had inculcated the doctrine of resistance only by pas- 
sivity ; had taught the people that disorder would 
only furnish the government with an excuse to set 
the soldiery upon unarmed masses, men, women and 
children, in the streets ; had counselled patience, 
self-control, fortitude and strictly constitutional ac- 
tion from the day of the organization of the League 
until it was proclaimed, — it is difficult to understand 
what form of agitation for the redress of grievances 
which the English ministers freely admit exist would 
be tolerated by the English government in Ireland. 



WHAT IS THE END TO BE? 447 

After the proclamation declaring the League an 
illegal body strange scenes were witnessed. Al- 
though profound order prevailed throughout the 
country, the constabulary had been increased and 
thirty-five thousand regulars were encamped at points 
adroitly selected. These men were frequently let 
loose upon the people to provoke them, and on the 
smallest provocation they used their swords and 
bayonets, as well as balls, with deadly effect, men, 
women, and even children, being their victims. On 
one occasion the soldiery, it was charged, were made 
drunk in order to render them the more savage, and 
in their maudlin condition they committed gross out- 
rages. The civilians slain did not figure in the press 
reports sent over to this country, but wherever a 
civilian, no matter who he was or what his stand- 
ing, committed the slightest breach of the peace, his 
conduct was charged upon the Land League, al- 
though he may have been an opponent of it. 

Even the meetings of the ladies' branches, which 
were engaged in purely charitable work, were dis- 
persed by armed ruffians. One day, when the 
women were about to assemble, the constabulary 
ordered them to disperse. There was no alterna- 
tive ; but the head of the society said to her asso- 
ciates, " Since we cannot work for those who are in 
need, at least we can pray for them," and they march- 
ed in a body to the nearest church, knelt around the 
altar and said the rosary while the officers, uniformed 
and armed, waited outside. This incident did not oc- 



448 WHAT IS THE END TO BE? 

cur in France during the days of the Revolution ; it 
occurred in Ireland in the month of October, 1881. 
On another occasion, when the ladies were ordered 
to disperse, and were about to do so, a Catholic 
priest demanded the authority of the officer. The 
reply being unsatisfactory, the priest told the ladies 
to adjourn to his house and hold their meeting there. 
They did so ; the priest, unarmed and gentle, stood 
on the threshold, and the constabulary quietly dis- 
appeared, respecting, without knowing why, per- 
haps, the ancient right of asylum in the sanc- 
tuary. 

The spirit of charity and mutual support which 
the League fostered is without parallel in the history 
of peaceful revolutions. Not only were the starving 
fed, not only were the evicts provided with shelter 
and clothing and the necessaries of life, but the 
temper of the people was softened ; all animosities, 
no matter how venerable their origin, were laid 
away, to be for ever, let us hope, forgotten. The 
families of those who were arrested were daily 
visited ; the crops belonging to the suspects were 
harvested by volunteers, men and women marching 
cheerily many miles with the necessary outfit for 
the task so willingly performed. The practice of 
" boycotting " was consistently carried on — in many 
cases, into the region of the quaint and ludicrous. 
But the first command of the League, " Break no 
law," was obeyed with remarkable docility. There 
were crimes, indeed, committed during the two 



WHAT IS THE END TO BE? 449 

years of the League's life, but they were inconsider- 
able in number, as already sufficiently shown, and 
there has been no serious attempt, even by the gov- 
ernment, to place the direct responsibility for them 
on the League. 

Organized for a moral, humane and righteous 
purpose ; led by men of the highest personal cha- 
racter ; directed by methods strictly constitutional ; 
the promoter of peace, order, patience; the victor 
over famine ; the harmonizer of all classes of the 
population and the distinct organ of the national 
sentiment, — the Irish National Land League was 
proclaimed illegal by the English government in 
Ireland and suppressed by force. Its foremost men 
are imprisoned, unaccused, untried, their persons in 
the custody of an irresponsible foreigner who hates 
them and oppresses their countrymen. All liberty 
in Ireland is dead. The world may well look in 
astonishment upon such a spectacle in a time of 
profound tranquillity, and in the last quarter of a 
century which has beheld the enlightening advance 
of constitutional freedom in every other part of the 
globe. 

But, happily for the Irish people, the irresponsi- 
ble foreigner who has extinguished liberty in Ireland 
has no jurisdiction beyond her sad sea-shore. Five 
millions of the Irish people in Ireland may be de- 
prived of constitutional rights ; twenty millions of 
the Irish people in the United States, in Australia 
and in Canada are free. They know that there can 



45 O WHAT IS THE END TO BE? 

never be happiness or prosperity in their motherland 
until her laws are made by her own people on her 
own soil. They know that until the people of Ire- 
land again own the land which was their fathers' 
there can be no thrift there. The agitation which is 
stilled for the moment in Ireland will be heard again ; 
and it is not stilled in any other part of the earth 
where human hearts beat with sympathy for justice, 
freedom and the inalienable right of every nation to 
regulate its own affairs and shape its own destiny. 
England has accorded to all her other dependencies 
this right. She withholds it from Ireland, and her 
statesmen affirm that Ireland will never obtain it. 
But English statesmen and English monarchs have 
made such affirmations often before and recalled 
them afterward, " Never," declares the eloquent 
bishop of Peoria, John Lancaster Spalding, " never 
— and I am in my inmost soul convinced of what 
I say — never has England done an act of justice or 
of reparation to Ireland from noble or humane 
motives. I do not in my heart believe that the 
average English public opinion holds now that the 
Irish are worthy of justice or mercy, of leniency." 

The record of English concessions to Ireland is 
this: 

I. Independence of the Irish Parliament in 1782. 
But there were eighty thousand armed Irish volun- 
teers then, and not a regiment of English troops 
in Ireland. They were all out in America trying to 
keep the king's word that he would spend his last 



WHAT IS THE END TO BE? 45 1 

shilling before he would concede the smallest priv- 
ilege to the American rebels. He kept his word: 
he did not concede the smallest privilege. But the 
American rebels wrested from him the right for 
ever to make their own privileges. In that dreadful 
situation, England could not pass coercion bills in 
Ireland, imprison Grattan, hang eighty thousand 
Irish volunteers, suppress free speech and deny the 
people the right of peaceably meeting to petition for 
a redress of grievances. " The wild shout of liberty 
was echoed across the ocean," says Bishop Spalding. 
England had no alternative but to concede the inde- 
pendence of the Irish Parliament. When her de- 
feated troops returned from victorious America, she 
sent them over into Ireland and abolished the Irish 
Parliament. 

2. Catholic emancipation was the next conces- 
sion. 

The king had sworn that he would die rather than 
sign the bill. Wellington told him that if it were 
not passed there would be insurrection in Ireland. 
He signed it. 

3. The abolition of the foreign State-Church in 
Ireland was the next concession. But Gladstone 
has declared it was Fenianism which made that 
necessary. 

The demands which are made now are two : 
Peasant proprietary and home rule. History will 
yet record the day on which both shall have 
been obtained. 



INDEX 



A. 

Abolition of the Irish Parlia- 
ment, 70. 

Absenteeism, 100. 

Address of the Continental Con- 
gress to the Irish people, 65. 

Administration of the new Land 
Law, 438, 439. 

Advantages of English govern- 
ment in Ireland for six hundred 
years, 57. 

Agrarian crime, 443. 

All the benefits of the new Land 
Law for the tenant contingent 
on the harvests, 437. 

American Congress receives Mr. 
Parnell, 3^4. 

An Orangeman proposes O'Con- 
nell for Parliament, 373. 

Armed constabulary, 183. 

Arrears of rent exclude from the 
benefits of the Land Law of 
1881,435. 

B. 

Benefit of the American war, 
70. 



Benefits of the Land Act of 1881 
for Irish landlords, 436 ; ben- 
efits for the tenant, 437. 

Between six hundred thousand 
and seven hundred thousand 
agriculturists excluded from the 
benefits of the Land Law of 
1881, 436. 

Blackstone on laws against na- 
ture, 146. 

" Boycotting," 389-394, 448. 

Bright, John, opinion of Irish 
industry, 60. 

O. 

Can Ireland feed the population ? 

400. 
Carew, George, civilizing the 

Irish, 47. 
Catholic emancipation, 89. 
Coercion Act, 182. 
Coercion bills, nature of, 403, 444 ; 

number of, in eighty years, 

404. 
Command of the Land League, 

(t Break no law," 441. 
Commissioners of the Land 
453 



454 



INDEX. 



League to the United States, 

383> 444- 

Comparison of crime in Phil- 
adelphia with crime in Ireland 
in 1879, 4°9; in 1880, 434. 

" Compensation for Disturbance 
. Bill," 422, 429. 

Confiscations of land, 40. 

Conservative elements in favor 
of the Land League, 366, 444. 

Contrast between England and 
Ireland, 27-29. 

Crime in Ireland, England, Scot- 
land and Philadelphia, 405, 
406, 409, 410. 

Crime in Ireland less than that 
of England and Scotland, 404, 
410; statistical table, 405. 

Criminal convictions in England, 
Scotland and Ireland from i860 
to 1879, inclusive, 405. 

Cromwell civilizes Ireland, 47, 
48. 

Crops, Irish, could be seized 
while growing, 424. 

Crowbars, muskets and evictions, 
424. 

D. 

Davitt, Michael, 309 et seq ; ad- 
vice to the tenants, 382. 

Decline of crime in Ireland, 406. 

Decrease of population in Ire- 
land, 396. 

Destruction of personal liberty in 
Ireland, 444. 

Devoy, John, letter of, 341 et seq. 

Difference between landlordism 



in the United States and Ire- 
land, 34. 

Difficulties in the way of suppress- 
ing the Land League, 442. 

Dillon, John Blake and John, 356 
et seq. 

Doyle on Irish landlordism fifty 
years ago, 197. 

Drogheda women in the church- 
steeple, 51. 

Dying in the ditches, 47. 



E. 

Earl of Leitrim, 238-243. 

Education in Ireland, 110-135. 

Effect of English society on 
Irishmen, 350, 351. 

Efforts to revive Irish manufac- 
tures, 78. 

Eighteen years of Home Rule, 
71,72. 

Emancipation of the Catholics, 

• 414- 

Emigration, 195 ; from Ireland 
from 1841 to 1879, 395- 

Emmet and Parnell,»444. 

Encumbered Estates Act, 415, 
416. 

England abandoned the South 
after robbing it, 432. 

English falsification of affairs in 
Ireland for effect in America, 
434; landlords voluntarily re- 
duce rents, 199. 

Evictions, 196, 202, 226, 232- 
235, 3§o 5 38i- 



INDEX. 



455 



Excess of crime in England and 
Scotland over that in Ireland, 

Excluded from the provisions of 
the Land Law of 1881, 434. 

Exports and imports, 76, 399. 

Extreme nationalists support 
Land League, 375. 



Factories in Ireland, 76. 

Fair conduct of the land com- 
mission, 438. 

Famine and crime, 443. 

Famine recommended by Eng- 
lishmen, 46, 191 ; artificial, not 
natural, 137, 184, 238; horrors 
of, 185 et set/. 

Fed by charity in 1880, 205. 

Final arrest of the Land-League 
leaders, 444. 

First measure passed for the re- 
lief of the Irish tenant, 412, 
414. 

Fixity of tenure for fifteen years, 

437- 
Food exported during famine, 

187, 399- 

Foundation of landlordism, 41. 

Four hundred thousand agricul- 
tural laborers excluded from 
the Land Law of 1881, 434. 

Freeman, the English historian, 
writes a book not now on sale, 

431. 
From Essex to Shirley, 200, 
201. 



Froude on land-owning, 141, 
146. 

G-. 

Gladstone and peasant propri- 
etary, 426; defines "eviction," 
429 ; on the North and the 
South during the civil war, 
431 ; Land Law of 1870, 419, 
420. 

Grattan, Henry, 69, 105, 106, 
109. 



" Hold the rent," 382. 
Home Rule allowed all British 
dependencies except Ireland, 

79- 
Homes of the tenantry, 138. 
Homicides in Philadelphia and 

in Ireland in 1 879, 409; in 

1880, 434. 

I. 

Immediate execution of eject- 
ment writs, 424. 

Imports and exports, 76. 

Increase of population in Eng- 
land and Scotland, decrease in 
Ireland, 396. 

Instructions given to subcommis- 
sioners under the Land Act of 

1881, 439- 

Ireland : Area, 33 ; population, 
33 ; exports food while she 
famishes, 399. 

Irish landlords have privileges 
denied English landlords, 424. 



456 



INDEX. 



Irish national Parliament, 81-190. 
" Is patriotism dead in Ireland ?" 
John Bright, 413. 

L. 

Ladies' Land Leagues, 384. 

Land Act of 1881 a repetition of 
that of 1870; not understood 
in the United States, 430. 

Land League proclaimed to en- 
able the landlords to collect 
rack-rents and evict, 441, 442. 

Landlords cheat the tenants out 
of the benefit of the act of 
1870, 426, 435. 

Land- owners in Ireland, number 
of, 136. 

Lawful to kill the " meer Irish," 

45- 
Laws for the relief of the Irish 

tenant down to 1 88 1, 422, 425, 

426 ; to enlarge the privileges 

of Irish landlords, 425. 
Lease-holders excluded from the 

benefits of the Land Law of 

1881, 434- 
Liberty, personal, destroyed, 444, 

449. 
Life in a model British prison, 

324-341. 

M. 

Malby to Queen Elizabeth, 44. 

Management of great estates in 
England, 147. 

" Manchester Three," the, 351. 

Manufactures, adaptation of Ire- 
land for, 58; suppression of, 60. 



Misrepresentation of American 
news and opinion in England, 

375,431- 
Misunderstanding the Land Act 

of 1 88 1 in the United States, 

430- 
Mitch el, John, 186. 
Monopoly of land perpetuated 

by the Land Law of 1881, 

436. 
Mother and son, Lady Wilde and 

Oscar Wilde, 351. 
Mourning in England for Pres- 
ident Lincoln and for President 

Garfield, 432, 433. 

N. 

New Land Law not a permanent 
settlement of the Irish ques- 
tion, 437. 

No manufactures possible in Ire- 
land under present system of 
land tenure, 152. 

" No-rent manifesto," 445, 446. 

Notice to quit, 382. 

Number of persons employed in 
textile industries, 75 ; of Irish 
in other countries, 449. 



Oath of supremacy, 44. 

Objects of the Land League, 

3°5- 
O'Connell's error, 414. 
Official organization of the Land 

League in Dublin, 363. 



INDEX. 



4S7 



Orangeism, object of, 84. 
Organization of the Land League 

in the United States, 384. 
Origin of title to the land, 51. 
" Outrage-factories " established, 

442. 
Owners of the soil shipped as 

slaves, 46, 51; compelled to 

fight in Sweden, 46. 



P. 

Parliament, the Irish, 36. 

Parnell, Sir John, 98, 100; 
Charles Stewart, 355 et seq ; 
denied privileges allowed 
meanest malefactors, 444. 

Peasant-farmer, condition of, in 
Holland, 154-158; in France, 
159-164; in Prussia, 164-168; 
in Russia, 168, 169; in India, 
I 69-181. 

Peasant proprietary proposed by 
John Bright, 413. 

Peculiarities of Irish landlord- 
ism, 183-236. 

Penal code, 52-56. 

Pledge given to Ireland by Eng- 
land in 1800, 404. 

" Poor Law " in England and Ire- 
land, 424. 

Population, Great Britain and 
Ireland, 396; to the square 
mile : Belgium, 400 ; Bavaria, 
402; Switzerland, 402. 

Potato crop an index to famine, 
380; value of, 380. 



Powers of the land court, 437, 

438. 

Poynings's law, 89. 

Presbyterians democratic, 84; 
not Protestants, 84. 

" Priest in politics," 366. 

Primogeniture and entail abol- 
ished in Ireland, 415, 416. 

Principle of English legislation 
concerning Irish manufactures, 
62. 

Professor Cairnes on Encumbered 
Estates Act, 416, 419. 

Proportion of convictions to ar- 
rests in England, Scotland and 
Ireland, 406. 

Protestant Irish patriots, 69 ; in- 
surrections, 371. 

R. 

Recent theatrical display of 
mourning at the English court, 

433- 
Record of English concessions 

to Ireland, 451. 
Redpath, James, 202. 
Religious discord fomented by 

the English government, 369. 
Rent, definition of, by Mill and 

Cairnes, 141. 
Representation of Ireland in 

British Parliament, 70. 
Restoration of Irish trade by the 

Irish Parliament, 69. 
Restrictions on Irish trade and 

commerce, 63, 64. 
Reward of Dr. Kenny, 444, 445. 



453 



INDEX. 



S. 

Scotch and Irish crime compared, 

406. 
Sectarianism an English policy in 

Ireland, 372, 373. 
Seed of the Land League, 237- 

303. 
Serious offences committed in 

England, Scotland and Wales, 

410. 
Ships, Irish, swept from the seas, 

63- 

Six hundred thousand agricul- 
tural tenants in Ireland, 438. 

Soldiery made drunk, 447. 

Specimen rack-rents, 289. 

Spenser, Edmund, son of, evicted, 

Spy assigned as counsel for Robert 
Emmet, 444. 

Strange scenes, 447-449. 

Sullivan, A. M., 187. 

Suppression of correct informa- 
tion about Irish land tenure, 

423. 
Sympathy of the Irish with the 
American Revolution, 65, 87. 

T. 

Table showing population and 
crime in England, Scotland 
and Ireland, 406. 

Taxation, 217. 

Tenant in Ireland required to 
care for crop after seizure, 424. 

Tenants make all the improve- 
ments, 146. 



Terms of the Land Act of 1 88 1 
concerning peasant proprietary, 
436, 437- 

The Land League not commu- 
nistic or confiscatory, 381. 

Thirty- two laws for the benefit of 
Irish landlords, 425. 

Tithes, 370. 

Titles to land no better, morally, 
in England than in Ireland, 

423- 

Trade, Irish, with foreign coun- 
tries suppressed, 65. 

True settlement of the Irish ques- 
tion, 437. 

Turnips, parsnips and transporta- 
tion, 190. 

U. 

Ulster tenant-right defined, 420, 
421. 

"Undertakers," English and 
Scotch, 41; "Articles" con- 
cerning, 43. 

United States, origin of Land 
League in, 336. 

V. 

" Vagrant rays of ministerial sun- 
shine," 66. 
Volunteers of 1782, 70, 71, SS. 

w. 

What form of movement for re- 
dress of grievances will the 
English government tolerate in 
Ireland ? 446. 



INDEX. 



459 



" Whoever commits a crime is 
the enemy of his country," 

443- 
Why Ireland cannot feed her 

people, 402. 
Why the Irish Parliament was 

abolished, 72. 



Why the Conservative peers vo- 
ted for the Land Act of 1 88 1, 
430. 

Why we get no skilled labor 
from Ireland, 61. 

Wilson, John, 314. 



THE END. 















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